WHEEL SMASHING LORD 1-20
Chapter: 1
“Lord Mana, a man that treats people as he hammers iron, and treats tools as his most tender lovers. No greater craftsman will ever exist, I am sure. Shame.”
-Payapop Pritram
Kill Six Billion Demons
BREAKER OF INFINITIES
Fifty Shades of Grey, but the man/male is not a young, handsome billionaire, but a sleazy, hirsute ugly guy with legendary blue collar accolades.
Most readers already know the sex transaction is somehow forming the maybe/meme sword in the background. Some readers dump reactionary rage on the author not so much for the degrading, voluntary sex transaction, but for the overall horrible decline of glamorous lady warlord.
Wherever this goes, Abaddon, I hope the narrative pay out ties this all together on a really deeper level
The Maybe cuts deep.
Personally, I see it as a Mentor imparting her experience of the cycle that her trainee now is within. She has picked a path of naked violence, and sometimes violence is coercion. Sometimes violence is sexual. Sometimes, violence is a head being crushed in the fist of an immaculate martial artist. We hear it in how she speaks of the style, in how she shaped the thoughts that allow one to become a cutting motion never ceasing. They’ll take whatever they can from you, so are you not justified in doing the same? Does the murderer that could be still move unceasing when you cut his throat? Did it matter that you used a blade or a particularly sharp or dense rock? After all, the only strike that matters in a fight is every strike that kills. It doesn’t need to be a blade. It can be a question that causes you to reassess your motives at the wrong moment. It can be a sword that a smith might make for you. It could be the thought that turns the cutting motion on itself. What does it matter when they all lead to dead men for the pile?
And here is another, more sharp blade for us all: Why do we balk less at the head being crushed? In this? In other media?
I’m really struck by the glamorous lady warlord bit. People are really looking at “I was a dreadful warlord, perpetrating what sounds like multiple genocides” and going “weee, girlboss, don’t the author dare touch her.”
I mean, I love auntie Maya, but she definitely wasn’t one of the good guys before the Question. Definitely not after Jagganoth’s own question, and perhaps not for a while before that.
(Which of course doesn’t make it cool and fitting that she has her family killed, or that she’s raped by an ogre. But the people fantasizing about her killing the ogre for this crime should, by all accounts, also believe she should likewise be punished for hers.)
Thank you; you got me in one. Anyone can see how the vitriolic reactions to Maya’s degrading sex transaction came about, but truth be told – horrific endings was the business Maya had long made for herself.
Her business was to threaten hundreds of thousands; slay thousands more; topple other demiurges. Her own personal death/outgoing coup/decapitation was the probable outcome of her time as a pan-dimensional conqueror.
… But like any good American media consumer, I was able to ignore and partially glamorize the violence and warlord-ism and scream bloody murder when the author has her enter a degrading sex transaction.
That said, I agree generally that fantasy writers tend to use the girlfriend-in-the refrigerator trope way too much, but I choose not to boycott the comic without seeing this chapter to completion because of an initial gut reaction.
I want to say I appreciate everything you’re doing, but since the end of King of Swords it’s just felt like.. Misery porn? I’m sorry man. You created a world I love and a story I want to follow, but at this point it just feels like an exercise in pain and frustration to follow. Gratuitous reminders of a point already made ten times over. There’s nothing left here for me, and I think others feel the same, but regardless I wish you the best with this comic and your future.
Good luck. I think I can speak for all of us when I say we wish you the best and we love you, at least a little bit.
No, you do not.
I was lying, fool.
Ever heard of brutal honesty? How about a white lie? Because I just want to be sure.
I’ve heard of crazy people who talk to themselves and you might just be one of them at this point. You’re also not very good at conveying your tone through text.
I can guarantee, if I’m ever making an insult towards someone I’m only ever a quarter, to a half serious. Anything else afterwards is for fun.
abaddon if you’re reading this please hurt me more
I would be very careful about calling this all misery porn.
The arc with Allison and Jadis in particular is from Tom’s harrowing experience with hospitals due to almost losing his wife and child at the time. Describing that as misery porn feels profoundly insensitive
Moreover, from a pure writing standpoint, it isn’t misery porn. The conclusion of that mini-arc was Allison declaring that the pain will always be there but it won’t limit who she is. Optimism in the face of overwhelming pain. That’s the polar opposite of misery porn.
An enemy with a big red weak spot on his forehead? If Maya is anything like her former master, he is likely soon to find fingers tinged with death prodding his brain, not that he was making much use of it.
maybe the *REAL* Maybe Sword was the extremely strong bones of the terrible orc blacksmith god we found along the way…
Learn to cut without a sword. Learn how others cut without a sword. And most of all, learn to make one cut for the sake of a sword. That is the true way of Royalty.
And wow do I hate Royals.
But did she get the sword?
Maybe.
Hey, I’ve been reading KSBD for years, but have never commented. I have experienced SA in the past, and I don’t have any problem with this storyline. I don’t feel that it is unforgivable to explore darker subjects, and am enjoying the comic as I ever did. Best wishes.
I wonder if the Maybe Sword is anything like the Possible Sword.
I suspect they are in fact opposites. A Possible Sword requires “sloppy” fighting, loose battle, requiring one to leave multiple choices that might have been with each attack. The Maybe Sword is deliberate, singular, and horrifically direct. A Possible Sword is all Cuts. The Maybe Sword is A Cut. As such they are very much the same.
I have read comments on the page. I can’t speak of the individual perceptions of people who have experienced abuse. Nor would I query whether or not they are triggered.
Personally what I see here is awful, but it is not rape.
It is transactional and revenge-driven sexual exchange followed by continued abuse equally facilitated by blind hatred and desire for revenge.
In the case of revenging family, who can say the levels someone would not go to to facilitate this.
But I have no.doubt that Maya could have chosen to annihilate her abuser and leave at any point.
It’s unspeakably sad that her need to satisfy that broken part of herself has led her to experience even deeper pain. And if that is a trope, it is only because the “anything for revenge” one is a powerful one.
For me it highlights that the path of suffering is sometimes self.determined. Had she not climbed to the heights she could not have been brought down by a woman in a barrel. Had that not happened she could not have found and lost simple happiness with family. Had she lacked the will she would have died and not sought revenge.
I want Maya to be healed (And avenged) and an end to Allison’s suffering. And I want Cio back … but I’ll see what the author has before judging an individual page.
To me the bit with the “medicine” implies that it basically stopped being consensual at that point and moved into the territory of debt slavery and possibly also controlling through substance abuse.
And like… “She could have left at any point”? In the context of abuse that echoes some dark stuff, tbh.
I’m not sure how true it is here either. We don’t know what level of power Mana is at, and this is Maya at the lowest point we’ve ever seen her. She’s clearly barely clinging to life in the first panels and in the last she looks basically catatonic.
She *is* the sword.
Manamum mana is forging her pain and suffering into the edge of the maybe sword.
6 years of degradation, rape, pain and suffering- is the awful tempering of her soul, removing all remaining softness, remorse, and weakness,
allowing her very being to be the edge which cuts through all things.
With the total destruction of self, only the cutting edge remains.
Maya.. Maybe wrapping herself in a bowl of noodles, but the newly forged sword that is her soul will cut through all.
Very possibly. It makes complete sense from the description Maya gave of the sword and why the technique should never be taught.
I believe the truth will be revealed shortly.
Molto Bello
K6BD readers when the story setting designed to be horrible and hopeless shows something horrible and hopeless.
it’s not even that hopeless though bc obviously maya gets out of it and achieves the maybe sword, somehow. Whether she gets or revenge or decides better of it, it’s just a trite and hackneyed trope. A lot of this arc has just felt like greatest hits poorly paced rehashing of the previous god emperors, which is obvi on purpose but also just. tedious.
It’s probably pointless to comment because everyone had already made up their own minds and an anonymous argument in an online comment section has never changed anyone’s mind, and never will.
But I wanna say that this page didn’t surprise me. A lot of fantasy nowadays seems to go back to the SA well for strong women’s backstories a lot, and Maya had a fall from such an exalted height that it seemed inevitable to me that her backstory would contain some kind of sexual abuse. Considering, as you say, Tom, you wrote this eight years ago, it makes sense: it feels like it’s eight years out of tone with the kind of writing of female characters you’ve been doing lately. Maybe a revision of this part of the story would have been in order?
That said, I do trust your writing, you’ve gotten over humps of themes and executions I haven’t 100% jived with in the past so I can believe that next Friday’s page will make this one feel more like it fits. Everyone has different tolerances, so I won’t begrudge anyone their decision to leave, but they sure are being melodramatic and puritanical about it. All the folks saying you’re ‘disappointing’ or ‘betraying’ them in the comments can flee for the hills if they wish, this is still the single best webcomic ongoing today and they all know it too. There would have to be way nastier stuff depicted in a way more ham-handed manner than this page to make me drop this comic at this point!
Sword waifu NTR’d by ugly bastard
Honestly, I am just contrasting this scene with Nadia Ohm explaining her past. Similar backstory but nothing explicid, no flashbacks, just two people talking. It even ties into the reason Allison dyed her hair blond, showing that that she understands some of Nadia’s experiences, which gives an overarching theme of how the world treats woman that matches the material.
In contrast, here we get a good look at a big fat ugly dude straight out of some messed-up anime. I get this is supposed to show Maya at her lowest point willing to do anything for revenge, or forge her into a sword or whatever, but there are other ways that can be done without making the two female demiurges have the ‘traditional female backstory’. Hell, if it was absolutely necessary at least try to tell it in a way that is less revolting.
I was about to say “Hey, don’t forget about Gog-a-gog!” but then I realized that Gog-a-gog might be the clearest example of they/them there ever was.
This is not an easy path, but I suppose she’s earned it.
You guys made it through the entire section with Mottom and schlocky girllboss trope after trope in the comic instead of anything resembling organic character development… and you’re surprised by this page? lmao I don’t hate this comic but it’s always been a grab bag of cliche and plenty of sexual violence and abuse used for drama and shock value/horror, I don’t know what else you expected.
The first scene in the comic is of a dubious and kinda awkward hookup between a lesbian and a guy. The second scene in the comic involves beating up ruthless traffickers and flesh sellers, “You also enslave women. This is not illegal but highly displeasurable to me.” White Chain’s relationship with femininity is clearly entwined with her sense of justice reacting to all the bloody brothels in the world, as its where she was spending her beats before Allison. Cio used to run one of these brothels and is plenty familiar as a former slaver herself. Maya, Allison, Cio, White Chain, ALL our main characters’ stories touch on the violent misogyny of a decaying world. Mottom is the first demiurge we meet and sets the tone for all the others, and her scene is why I trust this flashback in the first place. This story has been about rape since day one. This is a brutal world and a huge majority of the entire point of the comic to me is how consistently it sexual violence to me. It’s why I read it, because it is so devoted to talking about it unflinchingly, because I love Mottom and Maya and Jadis so much and they are such real takes on coping with it, some of the most organic and compelling stories about trauma in bizarre circumstances I’ve ever seen. Engraving sword law into my heart has helped me overcome my own six years in the forge. People making it through the comic and reading these stories as trite and typical when very few things discuss trauma with as much care and strength as KSBD feels as careless as the people talking about how Mana’s not that bad.
Well, i have EXTREMELY strong feeling that your inspiration for this page was Lucipher, scene where Mazikeen has been captured by her ex-husband great scorio… it’s looks exactly the same
This is why you never ask for items with no price tag from the start.
The way the caption talks about the mana and ending with a satement about shame, im really hoping were implying that this guy gets merked
It’s literally a sword that is the idea of a sword. He’s a monster, but he’s forging her hopes and humiliation into the idea of a sword that is worth everything she’s endured.
“A technique used for killing, one that my master used only to pile corpses”
If you are to rise to the level of the gods, you will need something to stand on.
Hate is what kept her going. Perhaps the Maybe Sword is only as much of a sword as its wielder is, and this experience is part of what forged Maya herself. The text even says that he treats people as he hammers iron. In this, he has perhaps already begun to work on the commission she asked him for.
In Maya’s hands, her hate was enough to cleave dead gods across to the horizon.
For Allison… I am reminded of a HHGG quote. “It’s quite easy, if you don’t know how. That’s the important bit. Be not at all sure how you’re doing it.”
Not thinking about death will make her its ultimate wielder. But I suspect she’ll have a bit of a learning curve before she manages to truly act without thinking, on purpose.
Aye – the Maybe sword.. may be a sword, or it may be the will (or soul) of the wielder. Agreed that the clue is that Lord Mana treats people as the iron that he hammers. It takes 6 years to forge Maya into a god killer.. which is saying something as she was already formidable enough to become a Demiurge, and survive 10 poorly aimed cuts on her neck. Meti-ten-ryo was already dead at that point, so Maya already knew technique of cutting without a blade. I suppose Lord Mana only needed to make the perfect hilt.
He kinda resembles Wesley Willis
That dick is going to give her a broken/breaking sword isn’t he.