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.
Is it wierrd that the more we learn about Meti, the more I get where Incubus is coming from? I mean Maya could have made noodles with her mother, but they would have burned with Au Vam. Starting a family can make you happy until someone uses violence to take everything away, and they need to justify it only to themself. Apparently, the only way to have any lasting happiness on the wheel is to make sure nobody has the oppertunity to destroy what you hold dear.
“Doctor Who?”
It seems clear now that the question is not how to kill the Red God, or defeat him, but how to prevent him. How do you, as the wheel turns, avoid a world so cruel that the Red God becomes an inevitability? Ia!
11 Teach the Truth But Gently is observant.
Wouldn’t Allison, being a master in philosophy, totally get this reference to Diogenes in Mayas story?
She’s almost certainly noticed those similarities, but like, how would she bring that kind of thing up? “Hey, your master sounds a lot like a weirdo philosopher from my world, that’s kind of neat.”
Yeah, that is a good point.
God, I love this comic
I think the question was simple: So what?
This one stuck with me. What was the question? What could have been said to make a Demiurge FLEE?
The truth is that Meti failed as a teacher as much as Maya failed as a student.
The moral of every one of her lessons rang true, but the Barrel-dweller delivered them all so coldly and devoid of compassion for her ward’s folly that she came to associate such wisdom with mistreatment. Meti made the same mistake as the Storm-Crowned: seeking to dominate her subject’s mind through the inspiration of fear.
“And then what?”
I think the sword is the Answer to the Question.
For Maya, the answer was “Maybe”, so for her it is the Maybe Sword.
And there is a prophecy that Alison will wield the blade of Want.
You… you, my friend, are onto something.
>”where your mother family ,etc”
Wait , that not fits. If she had all these armies then > there financial resources to support that army > she totally had opportunity to help her family and whatnot. Successful private army enterprise either rich or it cant support itself.
Having all that not excludes her from caring for mother, father , whoever , it helps !
PS Hey you . Yes , you commenting this in the future , inventing , crafting and making up all the reasons why she could not use her power and riches to help family – that what you writing is _you_ adding to the plot. Its not in the comic. (At least not yet). You not explaining why it makes sense , you writing and adding to the story.
Just to save time on commenting again.
Maybe because the most important piece of information here is that Maya lost her mother somewhere along her path to royalty, and Abaddon trusts his readers to be smart and creative enough to fill in the details with their own headcannons?
Some examples of which I would have been happy to discuss, were it not for your final lines forbidding anyone to answer your comment posted in a space for free exchanges and debates. Which, I feel compelled to mention, makes you rather sound like a jerk.
She lost her family because she didn’t care about them anymore. She was consumed by her quest for personal power and world domination. Would her family have even recognised her as Mathangi?
This is a puzzler. Incubus looks genuinely pained here, and we know he kills Meti, so it seems like a fair guess that he does so because she caused Maya distress. But later, he hunts her down and seemingly attempts to murder her (and very likely does murder her family). Presumably that’d be plenty distressing too, so…
I’m sort of getting a, he did these things out of “love” to “help” her vibe, but the only way I can make it mentally work is for Incubus to have some really definitions of helping and love. (Which, given how we’ve seen him act might be accurate, but it’s not terribly satisfying).
Nah, Incubus’ whole shtick is selfishness. He killed Meti because she broke Maya, which then disrupted his whole world. He hunted down Maya because she had the Key, the Crown, the Flame, which he needed to lead the Middle Army.
Possibly, but he seems to have played second banana for an awfully long time if selfishness is his only motivation.
We’ll see, I guess.
That’s what I’ve been thinking as well. We have no indication that he even tried to get the Key for himself after they killed Yantris and he seems to have been quite content to follow her. Not really what you’d expect from someone who’s driven solely by selfishness. And weren’t they supposed to have been lovers at one point?
Incubus seems to really like the role of dragon-cum-éminence grise. Before Maya’s flashback, he attempted to play that role with both Al-Yisun and Jagganoth. I suppose if you think of him less as someone who wants power for its own sake and more as someone who wants to be safe, it makes sense. You’re less of a target that way.
Perhaps, but that seems to conflict with his actions in taking Maya’s seat. He had a whole army of people he could have set up as a figurehead while he remained a power behind the throne, but took the seat (and the hate of all the other demiurges (Jagganoth perhaps not included)) for himself.
“Why do you strive so hard to become me?”
I’d be running for the hills too.
The later murders aside, Incubus did look genuinely worried for her. Maya was his closest friend, probably the only one he’s ever had. It’s not surprising that her abandoning everything out of what he’d see as weakness caused him to kill Meti and presaged his descent into total ratfuckery.
‘Then you have lost,’ my master said. ‘Do you know why?’
I’m not sure what the question was… but the answer is definitely 42.
I feel like you guys might be misunderstanding her comment about Incubus. Being a poor swordsman to the point of being unable to kill your “sister” is something their master would consider a success. It might mean that he never could ignore his heart.
Remember, in the story of Het and the rakshasa (was that the name of the creature? Irrelevant). The centurion was described as relishing the cutting and the killing, showing great haste I’m drawing and using the sword. That was described as being of poor swordsmanship. I do feel it is repeated here: Incubus is so focused on power and the act of cutting, it makes him a poor swordsman. He doesn’t hold back to spare Maya, he cannot transcend his lowly desires, and thus cannot achieve a perfect cut.
“And then what?”
i don’t know what the question is but the answer is 42
Exceptionally poor swordsman, eh?
“Consider this: The swordsman who has never been defeated must be exceptionally poor” – in KSBD these two are not a coincidence
Reminds me of the Intra statements to the High King Aurochs:
“Well, not anyone can use my lack of technique. No ordinary fool could make that blow,” (Intra) replied “only one extremely dedicated to foolishness.”
“Powerful men, my lord, must by nature be exceptionally good fools,” said the young man (Intra).
“Tell me, Mathangi, how many gods have your murdered? All I see are toppled thrones.”
Noodle Seller, I am going into battle and I require your strongest noodles. My noodles are only for the strongest of beings. You can’t handle my strongest noodles.
“The best swordsman doesn’t fear the second-best swordsman. He fears the worst swordsman. It’s impossible to predict what that idiot will do.”
I imagine the question is “Will you be happy”
I’m not sure why but I feel like that’s been said before, in this comic? It feels like “Arc Words”, almost? I’m not sure.
sword the size of a small tree and he still can’t cut one neck. truly sad, someone get this man a chainsaw or something
A chainsword maybe?
Mathangi murder the gods and topple their thrones when death comes for you will you kill it too?
She might if she’s drunk enough