WHEEL SMASHING LORD 1-15 to 1-17
Chapter: 1
“Listen well, peasant girl. The time is long past I teach you the ultimate technique, as I have promised.
The only thing you must understand about this technique is it is purely for killing. This is the cut of no cuts, the form of no form. It doesn’t have a name. There is no school it belongs to. There is no master it belongs to, not even you. There is no purpose it belongs to. It is a poisonous technique, the product of a thousand venoms distilled from one master to the next, back to the line of the Gods. All my master used it for is stacking corpses, and his master before him, and his master before that, and that is all you shall use it for as well.”
-Ryo, to his student Meti.
The fools wonder about the question.
When the important part is the lack of a good answer.
What constitutes “a good answer” will necessarily depend on the question asked, though.
Truly. Which is why I didn’t say that the important part was the answer, or a good answer, but the lack of one.
Despite all her might and power, Maya neglected that which was important to her. What she neglected was important to her, but needn’t be to us – to us this simply shows us a limitation of such might and power, one that is to be generalised if it is to be meaningful. Since if it isn’t, we are simply witnessing the consequences of a mistake, not a grave error.
My apologies for interrupting your train of thought, then
Did you leave the stove on?
Good guy Incubus saved Maya from a preventable house fire.
I think the most fascinating thing is the expression in panel 11. It doesn’t look malicious, or cruel, or malign at all. She seems overjoyed, like someone had finally, *finally* listened and acted to a truth she’d always seen.
Zal is very observant.
27 Missing Beads would have missed this if not for Zal’s musing and thus they are grateful.
Panel 11…? By my count, that’s the panel that says, “That sound will follow me to Hell.”
Panels 1 and 2 are the head shots embedded in the splash page that’s the third.
It’s a good panel. There’s power there. Your reasoning is sound- Meti is derisive toward women like Maya was- but would she laugh at them for being laid low? I waver, but do not think so. Meti is laughing because, despite losing everything to the sword, Maya finally understood her master’s lesson. She got there in the end.
We have not seen Meti with a smile until this comic. Finally Maia gets the joke
Yes- to me, it’s “holy hell, she gets it! The noodle girl ACTUALLY sees what I was getting at! Maybe there is hope for her after all”. It definitely reads as almost stunned joy, rather than a hollow, pointless rubbing of salt in the wound, which would totally undermine Meti’s “victory” here. So complete was this victory- just a question- that nothing more need be said or done to win.
Ah, I see you know your Diogenes well.
That means Maya is Alexander the Great? I think Diogenes was being rude to Alexander from the get go, Alexander being a conqueror and all. I wonder what Meti witnessed to make her turn against her own pupil.
I believe the question, simple as it may be, is: “then what?” A lot of people with ambition mean nothing ultimately because they drove themselves into their aspirations because they wanted the satisfaction. If you’re going to murder six despotic godlings and claim their throne you best have a plan for after lest you wish to keep the wheel in motion.
Holy Sephiroth-sized sword, Incubus!
“Pale Bolt” has much to compensate for it seems.
“Eh, so what?”
Alexander the Great approves today’s page.
I honestly can’t understand reasoning of throwing everything you worked hard for just from a simple question like “Are you happy?” or other corny bullshit like that.
And then showing the character being actually happy with some typical stuff like finding a life partner and having a cheap family time with them. And then of course in typical story like this author must show how that was destroyed too cause that fits the theme for revenge.
It is a bit infantile way of thinking I have to admitt, maybe I’m more cynical or selfish but for me moving up in my work and all that is not for my family but for my own personal satisfaction.
Also happiness is overrated if you aren’t immortal and forever young cause it will always end one way or another and you can’t do anything about it, everything is fleeting, including your family which will also die at some point sooner or later, same like feelings with time.
Power is fleeting as well. If everything is fleeting, why choose anything but happiness?
Addicts do indeed have buddha-nature.
Kikeron is more akin to Incubus than he realizes.
Kikeron has a long way to go to achieve royalty
In coldly logical thinking, IMHO, you are right. But the majority of people consider families of utmost important, and it makes sense to see a former master ask their student about their family.
Also, I agree indirectly that the story set-up deliberately highlights that Maya seemingly made a hard choice between career success, material wealth, personal happiness, and/or families exclusive. Of the overall story’s very few faults, Maya’s life choices seem a little forced, given how she started.
As an aside, the majority of working men will happily state that the main reason they work hard and try to move up at work is for their families, and nice stuff and (influential) power are generally nice-to-have byproducts.
On the contrary to your nihilism:
You’re going to die one day, why *not* be happy? Why *not* bring joy to others?
Why not enjoy your brief time in the sun, instead of sacrificing it and bringing misery to yourself and others in pursuit of just a little more?
Breaking news: how you live you days is how you live your life
Next up at 7: There is no God to wash the blood off our hands, we must endeavor to make sure clean hand have no need to get bloody
You are neither cynical nor selfish, you are merely noticing a tired cliche, and wishing for more depth. I agree with you, this work has trained us to expect more depth than this. In reality, I suspect, there actually is no simple question one could ask that would have this effect.
Actually, I can think of one: “If I kill you now, will you die satisfied?” Because Meti totally could, and I would run away really quickly too.
But somehow I doubt that’s it.
Is it really a cliche, if it’s true?
@kikeron
Why hello Incubus, having a good time today?
@27 Missing Beads
But what brings someoen happiness? That’s the question. What brings you joy? Discard all else in your selfish quest to find joy.
@Demarquis
What if there is no greater depth? Meti seems to have seen to the heart of Maya, to what she’s always wanted, someone to love and adore her, Maya just went about getting that love the wrong way because she was infatuated with the legend of Meti.
If Meti had really cared about Maya’s future she’d have killed herself before Maya was born.
Roleplaying aside, this is a very good question. The question, maybe (though I don’t think the one from the story).
And everyone’s answer will probably be different, though I have a feeling that – if someone answers the question honestly – the answers will lie mostly in the same direction.
I think I have the answer for myself, but your comment was a good reminder for me to sit down and reevaluate, even if just to end in the same place. Honest thanks, mate <3
But that’s the thing. It wasn’t worth it. Nothing that Maya did was worth her time. She trained with the sword and now has the ability to destroy armies, but for what? Her conquest didn’t even save her home city. Her only companion is an awful person, and everyone she knew is extremely dead.
If she succeeded and won the war, what good would her rule do for the people? Living on the wheel doesn’t suck because it has the wrong person in charge, it sucks because there’s one person ruling over everything. You really think any version of the rules can be just in 777,777 universes?
The worst part for her is that I don’t think the kids were enough either. At this point, even without Incubus killing them, her great great great grandchildren would have been dead for thousands of years. She’s still alone in the world.
You’re astute, here- Maya wasn’t pursuing a career to help her family. She wanted power, respect, strength. Her issue was not that she was ambitious, but that her ambition led her to destroy everything else that once mattered to her.
…and I thought I was a fool.
A fool who is aware of his own foolishness, or even the possibility that it exists, cannot truly be considered a fool.
Because she’s the same butcher that every other demiurge has become. Why did she have that power? What was the actual end? It clearly wasn’t to right some great wrong– Jagganoth is closer to that, though his fatal flaw is different in turn.
What point is ambition it itself. Maya was going to have the whole world in her hand and then… What? What then? There was no answer. The goal was the goal. How ugly a way to exist. And so she fled, when she realised she was what she ultimately hated. And meti laughed at the Intrinsic comedy of her pupils failing.
so what? everybody dies in the end of the day, and all things fade with time-mechanical hands are the ruler of everything, after all. and that applies to all the money and success that you could ever achieve-your money will become useless paper and metal and your success wouldn’t matter in hell or in heaven, because either you’ll get tortured anyhow like all the other sinners or be surrounded by those whos success is equal or grater then yours. and most importantly, when they burn you or put you in a box, no one will be there, crying-the only people there would be other man seeking to fill their ambition with money and success, and the only thing they’ll take from your death is an opportunity for their own advancement. meanwhile the poor, poor man in the funeral next to yours, who has spent his life caring and bringing happiness to himself and others, will die happy knowing his life had meaning, crying family and(or!)friends around him.
My own theory is that the question Meti asked is the same one she brandished when the young Incubus, child of famine, staggered before her with the sword:
“Well?”
It makes Sense and would be a hell of a comeback.
“THEN WHAT?”
the most narratively satisfying question is “what do you think about death” considering that’s the motif maya keeps showing up with, but I don’t really see how that would break her will.
I’ve given it a bit of thought. It might be that she only really got as powerful as she was by not thinking about death. Like if you’re committing to any worldview based on conquest you have to not think about what it means when you stab someone and they stop moving. Kind of fits in with her whole “See how demiurges use the power of creation in the same way one might use a sharp rock” deal.
“An Especially Sharp Rock”.
Please cite the Holy Scriptures accordingly.
I mean “quote”.
So why did the other Demiurges hate Incubus in particular? There used to be an implication that Maya willingly gave up her Key and thus he didn’t prove himself in battle, but here it is shown that he did take it by force, not to mention that Jadis and Mammon didn’t slaughter their way through theirs anyway. Is it the fact that he gained control of her armies before obtaining the Key itself? That he only attacked her when she was at her lowest power? Maybe that, in a show of very poor skill, he didn’t manage to kill her in the process?
Judging from the story it looks like she gave up her key willingly “I cast aside my crown.” So yeah, I think the other demiurges recognized that he was a just a lakey who didn’t deserve the key.
And the other demiurges know she’s still alive, and that he still fears her even with the key, because otherwise she’d be dead.
I was under the impression that she gave up everything except the Key, since AFAIR the only character so far we’ve seen give up theirs and live is Zoss himself, plus I don’t see the Key in Incubus’ head in this panel. That last point makes a lot of sense, however.
Meti said she cast aside her crown. It’s basically synonymous with her keys power. She plucked it from her head and abandoned it.
It was both him just being handed the key and the pathetic way he attacked and destroyed what she had while minding her own business, even more so that he couldnt even finish the already pathetic action.
Just to add, I would say Solomon would have found it especially distasteful.
Because Incubus was only ever a jumped up gutter rat who thinks of nothing less than kicking over everything that made him who he is.
The others either are “royalty”* or pretend at it, Incubus drags his gutter with him and has naught but disdain for the concept of shame.
* In that Solomon fought to become what he thinks is royalty, he puts on the airs, but he has fought and won and strives still to be True Royalty. Mother Om puts on airs of she thinks everyone thinks Royalty must be, but is in fact only a devourer, a glutton, and her hatred of Incubus ‘being himself’ is a self-loathing cast outward. Jadis doesn’t care. Gog-Agog also doesn’t care, but might just side with Inky due to her treatment at the hands of the others, for being the ‘clown’. Does Mammon even notice in his haze of dementia?
So it’s just Solomon with his self-righteous judgement and Om with her projected loathing and terror at being found out to be nothing more Incubus shamelessly is. They are after all the seven vices…
One possibility is that Maya gave up her key willingly, and the other demiurges hated Incubus for the weak way he acquired his key, so he sought out Maya and attacked her and her family to prove himself to the other demiurges. Yet nothing he could do would improve how the demiurges saw him, and in fact now they looked at him with even more disdain because that’s a real psychopath move.
Ten blows.
Ten
EARTH-SHATTERING
blows.
Earth shattering? They couldn’t even shatter the neck of farmer’s wife.
The Monster known as Joy would crush him utterly, for he has no desire to do other than survive.
When decapitating an enemy, it is severe impoliteness to use more than one blow.
to wield the blade of want you have to know: “is this what you want?”
“When decapitating an enemy, it is severe impoliteness to use more than one blow.”
-Meti’s Sword Manual
It seems that Incubus proves himself a supremely bad student once again.
Diogenes moment
Hrmm… Reckon it was “What do you think of death?”
But I figure I woulda gone with “Would you like some toast?”
I assume it’s intentional that this sounds an awful lot like Solomon’s backstory.
What exactly that means, I don’t know. Maybe that farming sucks and your family will get murdered?
Jagganoth’s backstory was also the same, though each had a different reaction. It seems to indicate that violence will go out of its way to destroy any peaceful family, due to the greed of the kings of man.
Violence doesn’t get to be a cycle without pulling peaceful people into it.
“Will *that* be enough?”
The DISDAIN. “An exceptionally poor swordsman.” Maya should just drop that line on him and be done with his sorry ass
“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladden swallow?”
I’m starting to wonder if Intra was actually Incubus. The page we see Incubus take Maya’s sword is the labelled “King of Swords”.
It would be strange though as Intra is generally portrayed as wise. But imagine if after this moment, Incubus went to meditate then came and killed the King’s slave before growing his own sword following and eventually seeing the Blue City fall to Yemmond while he was drunk. Then he kills Meti and chases down Maya here, to take her flame.
I don’t think Intra is Incubus, though Intra’s Song of Maybe takes place after Meti is in her Bowl Era, there’s no mention of Meti training him, Intra is described as a foolish nobleman (a far cry from the starveling son of famine we see Incubus started as), and Intra is a similar notorious drunk, where we never see Inky drinking much other than blood.
But imagine that his position with Maya gave people the idea he was a minor noble. He appears troubled here as Maya flees.
So imagine that after Maya fled, Her empire caves in and Incubus goes and drinks somewhere. Then he shows up one day and kills the king’s champion. He doesn’t let anyone know he’s Meti’s student, he just takes the name Intra and starts being an appreciated philosopher, spitting out much of what he had been taught until Yemmond shows up while he’s drunk and kills everyone in the blue city. Then he snaps, kills Meti, tries to kill Maya, takes her power and begins his own empire.
The alternative is that we might soon pickup some separate law of Intra being a student from some other line of trainers who just happened to show up and live while Meti was alive in her barrel.
A fallen halo is a tripping hazard.