WHEEL SMASHING LORD 1-23 to 1-24
Chapter: 1
THE DEATH CUT
YISUN held audience one in their fifth anti-spiral clockwise palace. White faced Pravi, who was a wise disciple, said:
“Lord, bestow upon us the armor that will resist ending. The days grow short and the nights cold. The quavering strands of our life grow thin and worn in these final days since we have come to know death. I bid thee Lord make us to know a companion of this feeling.”
And YISUN smiled in the fifth way and said in reply:
“As the stone is in the fruit, your death is already in you. There is no armor that will resist the contents of your own heart. You were cut down the moment you existed.”
-Spasms
Hey now Alison, she didn’t cut any super vital organs! Walk it o– ah, well.
“‘Tis but a fle/
/sh wound!”
Brilliant!!
My last month’s paycheck was 11000 dollars. All I did was simple 0nline work from comfort at home for 6-8 hours/day that I got from this agency I discovered over the internet and they paid me 45 dollars every hour.
Visit for more detail.. www.Payathome7.com
Begone vile flesh-mongrel! Thine circumstances are meager, and thine ploys as clear as the path we must walk.
My last paycheck was a non-alcoholic daikiri.
My job sucks.
But at least I actually drunk the fucking daikiri.
Ugh, I cannot encounter the word daikiri without flashbacks to the banana slug daikiri someone tried to drink back on ancient Fear Factor.
Skill issue tbh
Yeah Allison, you’ve got to pull yourself together. Don’t fall apart on us here.
Indeed, she must endeavor not to split. Or else, she’ll ever be beside herself.
Get a load of this guy, not understanding that the master of the wheel cannot break it, and that the king of swords must cast aside his blade
Rip in peace allison good comic hope it goes better next time.
Hopefully she obtains enlightenment from brewing coffee this time.
That would be a fun bit of bonus content to slip at the end of a book. The non-adventures of alt-universe Barista Allison, who found happiness in creating coffee foam art. Literally a “coffee-shop AU.”
Meti preferred noodles, but she’d probably approve.
You should read ‘Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance’
Allison is using the Photoshop blur tool to smudge herself back together
schrodinger’s alison
The cat is either alive or dead to the observer… But at the moment before the box is opened, only the cat knows which one it is.
… unless it chooses not to know.
Then, is the cat alive?
How could the cat care?
Well, the cat had just been shoved in a box and then had the lid closed. Cats don’t tend to like that.
It probably cared due to being cathandled, and was somewhat pissed then.
Schroedinger was wise, but even his wisdom and knowledge missed accounting for possibilities. Until observed, was the cat alive, or was it dead? Surprised, he was, opening the box to find that the cat was nothingness itself. The cat, not wanting to be crammed in a box, simply… decided not to be there. So, when you open the box, the cat may be dead, may be alive, may be somewhere else, or simply may not be.
Heisenberg’s Uncertain Allison?
will Al-Yisun survive such a blow? Maybe
Ah, but was there such a blow?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
…
Reality is what you make of it. What will Alison make of this?
she did want to cut to the chase
There was probably a less-horrific way to teach this lesson… But Allison’s never been patient.
The chase lies deep within the abdomen, I see
and chase to the cut
“…choose life… and then live.”
Dies anyway
I see.
One does not reach heaven through violence as their tool.
One must reach heaven through violence as the obstacle they must overcome.
To break the wheel, one cannot wield violence, one must set themselves apart from it not only so that they do not wield it, but it cannot affect them.
This is the Essence of ROYALTY.
The truth of ROYALTY is the singular act of cutting such that you have cut the need and capacity for violence both.
The wise man will note that this still requires cutting.
The fool will note that this also requires cutting the self.
Meti was a very wise fool indeed.
is it enough for one to break the wheel? does breaking the wheel mean isolating one from violence?
commonsense says one is not enough.
Ah! Interesting catch.
Maya said to reach heaven THROUGH violence, not WITH violence.
Perhaps heaven is not accessible via violence, but rather exists on the other side of it.
Words are so good.
Prim Bysmerian is observant.
A real Everything, Everywhere, All at Once idea. If people are in your way, killing them is the wrong thing to do. Making them happy and fulfilled will also get them out of your way.
So I can’t track down the specific text it came from, but the phrase “Reach heaven by violence” comes from TES (the Sermons of Vivec), which itself gets it from Aleister Crowley essentially verbatim. Provided that the phrasing is the same in both places, and the original quote specifies BY violence, KSBD changing the phrase slightly has always struck me as incredibly important, and I’m glad to see it being explicitly as opposed to thematically paid off here.
There’s of course a non-zero (pretty good) chance that Crowley got the concept from somewhere else, but I know at the very least that Kirkbride was specifically quoting Crowley, so at the very least the phrase is directly inherited from Crowley to Kirkbride to here, where it gets changed a bit.
schrodinger’s slash lmao
Pull yourself together, Allison.
Allison’s replies evoke images of a fiery goddess that was… ah, great queen of want, do you never learn?
She learned exactly one lesson.
F
F
F
F
Well, that’s going to leave a mark
or maybe not
Will Allison follow the path in front of her, accepting the words of the master and choosing to abandon her obsession with violence and the blade– or will she believe in her own will, rejecting wisdom and choosing violence in spite of the cosmos? What is more true to reality, if reality has any truth to it at all?
It is said that violence merely continues the cycle, and many have tried and failed to dispute this. But if we know anything about Allison, it’s that she doesn’t care about what has been tried and failed in the past. And I’m not sure YISUN cares about what has happened in the past either. As the famous quote misattributed to Einstein goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” And what is truth but insanity in a world ruled by the absurd?
Also, Maya says “the tools of liberation are the same as those of oppression” as if that decides their morality. But is the process of forging a horseshoe inherently evil and violent because it is the same tools and process as those used to create a blade? Is the action of cutting another human evil when it is used by a surgeon to save lives? Is not a tool simply a tool, and how it is used what truly decides whether it is righteous or vile?
Not to say that I am opposed to deontology or judging the morality of actions themselves, but is not an action (in this case violence) composed of not just the action itself, but also of intent and outcome? Is it not righteous to cut down a tyrant?
I’m with Allison on this one. Maybe this question isn’t one that should be answered. Sometimes what is needed is not understanding or philosophizing, but action.
I dont disagree with you, but maybe I can shed some more context on this?
I actually understand how everything is violence to some; Because in comparison to many ‘lesser known’ and/or indigenous societies and some individuals/movements (keeping in mind before colonialism they were in most fo the world) everything is. Perhaps this is intuitive awareness of that without realizing.
Basically, as per “Collumbus and Other Cannibals” ; many idigenous groups in the americas and most other areas of the world never cut down a tree. They only use fallen wood- it is violent to cut down the tree. The tree does not want to be cut down and is alive even scientifically, for one,
But also as inside outside theory of mental health (what is in your mind effects your actions and evironment, and vice versa) can apply to any outside object- if you extert your physical force of a hammer upon a horshoe, for example, you areliterally beating it into submission. If you see it as an object, why not a discarded tooth? Why not a *non* discarded tooth, etc..
The ‘Animism’ of many peoples works to adress this issue; By blessing and taking care with their actions, they allow for a calmer, more peaceful, less ‘violent’ mind.
However even these peoples tend to recognize *some* violence , if not always, is neccesary.
But um.. thats also not the only reason I understand.
The oppressors of the world also intentionally make it look like it *must* be violent. They suppress cultures like those I have mentiond, and highlight revolution or charity but never, ever, the mutual aid that allows for independent survival and community.
They even frame all violence, both destruction of harmful property and harming of people, as the same.
All this is to say.. with lack of framing that you have to actually search for on your own,
we are primed to believe everything is violence, due to not having the alternatives.
The wolf listens to your words. It does not understand them, but they are said in an tone it finds interesting. After a time, you stop making the noises. You are less interesting now, and it is getting hungry. It rips something apart to feed itself, making it un-alive.
The wolf did this this without care for what the strange hairless monkeys around it did or did not do. The wolf will continue to do this while it is able, until one day, it too ceases to be alive.
The world must be violent. Life demands conflict. The nature of it is is fungible, and the excess of it is abundant and we are the most egregious example of that compared to the other things of the earth by magnitudes, but this is an inescapable truth of life.
Place two different ant hills close enough to each other. Do so where resources are plenty and all could sustain themselves. and try to explain to them there are alternatives to genocide, a war where the victor will kill the other side down to the last unborn child. See what they choose.
Violence of Life is not equal to the Violence of Man. The Wolf inflicts violence unto others because it is needed to live. No Man requires the Violence that gold produces. Its only wanton and greed that moves the sword hand of Man
Man is more than a man. When a man throws himself before a blade to save a brother, he has saved Himself. When a man teaches another His own ways, he has taken another into Himself in order that He lives past his own death. And when a man devours all so that His children and people will live forever while Others starve? That’s just the Violence of Life.
I agree that the context of violence is important, but the lesson here is that the mindset of the savior can easily transform into the mindset of the tyrant, through nothing but the context of who sits on the chair, and who seeks to take it.
It’s not that context is unimportant, nor that the violence brought against and in favor of the oppressed are morally the same. It’s that the one who becomes master at slaying kings can all too quickly become the master of slaying potential kings, and then the master of slaying maybe-kings, and then the master of slaying, should they blind themselves to the paths violence can lead them down.
Violence is not bad, as long as you do not make it your only guide to all things.
True, violence can lead one down a path of tyranny, and certainly if the violence itself becomes more important than the reason behind it, then it can turn a visionary into a villain. I would like to believe that those attempting to break thrones do not always end up sitting in them though.
I fear we are missing some important context here.
The Red God views himself as a savior. He’s very clear on that point, and even plainly doesn’t enjoy the task he’s accepted. He challenges the others to defeat him, cajoles them into action, and only strikes to kill after they’ve failed to beat him.
The tyrant *is* a savior. They take on the belief that they can shape the world, that it is something that will bow, if only they force it to, and then from that stability, a better world is forged. Every one of the Demiurges demonstrates this, sometimes by litterally making people like themselves, other times simply by demonstrating the order and beauty they have bought with other’s blood. Even Zoss, through forcing the duty upon Alison and refusing death to cajole her onward, demonstrates that unwillingness to accept anything. They must fix the world, and it can be no one else to do it.
I think the question here is not if Allison and Jagganoth are the same, or even that she would be another Solomon or Mammon or Gog or whomever.
It’s if she is the tyrant, or some other kind of savior.
The problem is, even if some universal morality exists, it is not visible without perfect knowledge. Which means that when you liberate someone, you’re oppressing their oppressor—who themselves probably believed that they were the liberators.
Moreover, in the end, morality doesn’t decide who wins. Only strength decides that. Which means that in order to carry forward your morality, you must become stronger than everyone else. And there is no instance of someone who is stronger than everyone else not being viewed as an oppressor. So the cycle of violence will continue.
I think there is a verifiably good path, the path that pushes society towards a world where there is no oppression. There may be stumbling blocks and failures along the way, and those seeking to liberate may oppress, but as long as the tide of progress is brought forward it is unequivocally better than that which seeks to halt or even reverse the tide.
The beautiful thing about humanity is that we are always growing, always moving forward. Our development is unstoppable, constantly moving forward. What remains to be seen is not whether the cycle of violence will continue, but whether we can end it before we destroy ourselves. I believe we can, and I think that belief is worth fighting for.
That is such an interesting take. You don’t have to be stronger, just stronger than your oppressor at the time. There will be many who will become stronger than you whether through skill or by you weakening. So it perpetuates because of time. Time is part of the wheel that allows it to continue. So does that mean time has to be part of the equation for breaking the wheel? Does time relate what is considered liberation and what is considered oppression?
Answer; The tools of liberation are not the same as those of repression; Not all of them. The revolution of liberatik happebs everyday, and often the tools are merely to help eachothwr live outside of the system of oppresion and protect ourselves, as many peoples and societies have and do.
Additionally with regards to that protection, it is a mistake to equate the violence of oppression, which always kills or imprisons. With the violence of liberation, which does its best to only attack infastructure, systems, and exile/defame individuals.
This answer is lesser known because it has been obfuscated and suppressed by the tools of oppression; The oppressers not only try to destroy or hide those societies that live and have loved outside of oppresion, but also obscure records.
But they are losing! More and more people discover societies and groups that live outside of oppresion, and have done so for many deacdes, centuries, or millenia, due to the freedom of information. More and more discover ways to spread them.
We the people will win, in part as we have far more tools then violence alone.
I think the answer for KSBD isn’t the same as our reality. Mutual aid would go an incredibly long way, I agree, but I don’t know how possible it is for someone who isn’t capable of exerting the same violence to attack systems. In lower levels of beauracracy, certainly, but as soon as you have the attention of a demiurge or someone who has been entrusted with a key, the systems in place seem very ready to kill everyone attacking them, and I don’t think people are capable of defending themselves without generations of training like Zoss had.
You poor fool. You poor deluded fool.
The truth is that to liberate one is to oppress another. It might be possible to maximise the liberty and freedom of the people’s of the multiverse, but it can only be done by oppressing them somewhat; nobody may have such an excess of liberty as to worsen the liberty of others to a greater extent. Thus, for example, we might say that we emancipate all slaves, yet that oppresses others freedom to own slaves and be less burdened by toil themselves. We are always bound to make some unhappiness.
Which isn’t to say we should not try to increase liberty. Just… the tools of liberty and oppression are one and the same because they are two faces of the one devil-forged coin. Balance is needed. Sensitivity is needed. Listening is needed, as is looking and sensing and understanding.
Im not deluded lol, ive been educated by indigenous groups and countless hours of mutual aid and education.
Yes, balance, sensitivity, and understandibg are needed. And those are the tools of liberation.
The current world is swamped by wétiko.
But to fight back against it does not require oppression.
To give food to a homeless person is to liberate them. That is revolution,and it helps my mental health to do, it does not oppress me.
To give housing is the same.
To give reperations, is the same.
To treat others as people, and defend them from attackers but not attack the attacjers in thwir homes, is the same. And is not oppression, since they were oppressing.
I can keep going, and provide many, many books and videos.
When you feed a starving person, you have chosen to feed that person and not another person. You have chosen to feed someone, and let someone else starve. To the one still starving, they don’t care someone else has been helped, they only see that you have withheld helping them, thus, you are seen as an oppressor.
Could we not simply feed the other starving person?
Sure, if you have enough food for both of them. If you don’t, well… you’ll have to make a choice. You can’t live on principles alone.
(Well, in KSBD, that might literally be possible, but in general, political and economic systems have to deal with the fact that scarcity exists.)
Scarcity doesn’t exist. Sure, the inherent difficulty of logistics as a nature might enforce some level of natural scarcity, but that small level of natural scarcity is not enough. Millions of tons of food go to rot every day. Grocery stores throw out their stock into the garbage. 1/3 of all food in the world at least goes to waste. That is 1.3 billion tons of food going to waste every year. The only reason hunger exists on a systemic level is the drastically inefficient logistics that is simply motivated by greed and our current political system.
You cannot do logistics with principles alone, either.
Actually I have been unhoused and still glad when others in community got access to housing so you’re just fuckin wrong <3
Lins, I would be interested in knowing what indigenous groups you’re talking about, and in any material you can provide to help us understand your position better.
One is not oppressed simply because they have been prevented from oppressing others.
All sorts of oppression gets justified in the name of “preventing people from oppressing others” – this the justification that supports the entire carceral state. The police are preventing criminals from oppressing you by infringing on your right to life and property.
But once you’ve justified the right of the state to forcibly stop people from hurting others, that also justifies the right of the state to collect taxes (so it can do its job), and its right to use force to do so, and whoops now you’re using the tools of oppression to prevent oppression.
(OP’s example of “preventing people from owning slaves is oppressing others” is a little silly, but the general principle that a government must use force to prevent others from using force is basically unavoidable.)
The fact that a justification exists does not mean everyone using that justification is bad. There is a reason people use that justification, even if they aren’t really doing what the justification would suggest. Because it is a good justification.
You might be justified, but you’re still using the same system that’s used to oppress people. Which was the point OP was trying to make originally – the tools of liberation are the same as the tools of oppression.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re actually being oppressed by some objective standard. They’ll believe they were oppressed, and they’ll tell their kids they were oppressed, and the cycle will continue. The whole point is that violence doesn’t determine who’s right.
Spare us the sophistry, ‘not owning slaves’ isn’t fucking oppression and liberation isn’t a zero-sum game. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as royalty once wrote. And the tools of each are not the same because the struggle is not symmetric.
Allison isn’t dealing with individual instances of repression and violence. She’s dealing with the universal concept of repression and violence. Yes, the Civil War created unambiguous good, but it didn’t end the cycle.
inb4 Jagganoth defeated by a small curly-haired boy with a gemstone in his gut telling him that murder is wrong
Surely that would change his mind!
Says the boy who villified his own mother who was trying to escape her upbringing as a god meant to look down on all things and view them as inferior, using his distinctly mortal lens of perception and his barely teenaged years of experience during which time he never understood himself let alone others.
Oh Yisun we got a #steven universe critical
Maybe a better way is if Allisson would buy flowers and gave them to Jag and just simply ask him to stop all the violence and that she wants to become friends with him? or she should forgive vampire guy for killing the love of her life just because she should do like the fat lady did?
Honestly if a person seriously think even in fantasy setting that to stop violence incarnation which wants to destroy everything to make a clean state is not violence itself you are completely kidding yourself there bro.
Look at our current times I don’t think talking with our big russian overlord would stop his invasion or “special operation” in Ukraine, talking means nothing, only revenge and fightning for yourself does.
Correct, fighting back against the oppresser with too much powrr will do little to nothing, nore will doing nothing.
I.. had written something else but I realized , in a way, we do need revenge.
But not in the common sense of the word; revenge does beget revenge under our current system of heirarchy.
So take revenge against the current system.
Fight capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and take out the systems of oppresion that have perpetuated them in some cases for millenia.
Find the peoples who both have and do manage to live outside of them, and replicate their tactics.
Connsct with eachother and build solidarity, and healing,
All the while defending against oppression with your lives.
The natives of the americas failed to degend against imperialist invasion because thwy were seperated, bwcause they were out for their own communities,
Ib large part due to divisions sowed by the oppressers. Some wanted only to live peacefully and heal, others were so bent on revenge against specific groups- rather then the government and societal systems they didnt understand- they fought eachother.
The powerfuk of the world understand this, its why they have all been in perpetual wars for centuries.
Learn from that, learn from history.
And do all you can to not repeat it.
This is Kierkegaard’s Tyranny of binary. Choice and double regret. Either/or. Choose death and you will regret it. Choose life and you will regret is aswell – and in Allisons specific case, not choosing is also a choice.
Brutal and philosophical, I love this comic.
OH. ‘Maybe’
‘Maybe’ Allison will keep herself together and not be cut in half.
‘Maybe’ Jaggonoth will.
Thats honestly kinda genius, and it also works well as a comparison to debate, social movements, and so on..
Perhaps the answer then is to have more then one ‘maybe’.
More then one maybe swords; for then, it shll be harder to keep yourself.. your ‘wordlview’ , together.
:p
Lins is observant!
More than one ‘maybe’ hardly seems required. If one’s reality remains bound by the strictures of the Wheel, how can one deny that one has been cut by the blow that sunders everything around one? To decide ‘maybe not’ is to _refuse_ the strictures of the Wheel; to place oneself in a position to choose regardless of what _must_ be true within tbe Wheel’s bounds.
If Jagganoth could do that, he would have long ago.
I’ve got a “perhaps axe”, and a “could be cutlass”. My “perchance lance” is in the shop though.
Isn’t it demeaning when your well-intended meanings mean your means will have to justify your end?
What do you mean?
Its a verb, its a verb.
Freedom is a verb.
Something never finished, never done.
It happens out of need.
Its a fire and a seed.
And its terrible potential has begun.
A Broken Thing has excellent taste in music.
I was NOT expecting a reference to that song here of all places, but it’s a pleasant surprise nonetheless
Anything ‘may be.’ It is up to you to choose what will be.
I will not yield. I will not yield. I will not yield.
why, the comment section on this page has gotten back to “wise circle of Greek think-bitches”, and has does not yet have an insane clown! can i be the insane clown? I’m not quite good at it, but I’ll improve!
*honk honk*
You have my blessings !
*HONK*
thank you, fellow clown!
Is this where we get alternate the universe Ali or a cloned version of her?
What are most superhero comics doing nowadays?
“I would not tell you.”
Hmm, didn’t mean for that to be a reply. No idea how to delete comments. Oh well.
Maybe you meant it, maybe you didn’t. Replies May Not Be Retracted is the only universal truth!
Might be, but might also be where all the Alisons trained by interaction with the red lords have to die and take their fears with them. Those fears stopped her from herself, here they are cut.