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I am making $100 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $16,000 a month by working on a laptop, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply. Everybody must try this job now by just using this site.. www.Moneypay6.com
Bravo, Abbadon.
For once, I can actually sympathize with the implacable Yaun/Jagganoth.
Up until this panel, I felt more empathy with rabid xenomorphs than with the mustache-twirling, I-just-destroy-stuff villainy of Jaggy/Yaun.
Jaggahog’s hatred of the divine stems from an anarchic disposition against hierarchy, but devoid of the hope that such hierarchy can be destroyed whilst leaving the sentient alive. Personally, I’m not a fan of universal panocide, but The HOG’s quest for it is deeply rooted in sorrow and trauma, not delight and desire.
“DO NOT MOURN THE DEAD (…) THEIR DEATH IS A BLESSING.” – The Chakravartin, the Wheel-Turning King Who Has No Equal, Red Eyed Heir, Pankrator, God Eater, Bearer of the word BLADE and Destroyer of the Seven-Part World,
Think about it this way, the buddhists believe that existence was endless and made of suffering. The only way to leave the cycle was to become null and void through enlightenment.
Jagganoth thinks the same, just that he has decided to take the destroyer-god approach and cleanse the world. It not an uncommon mythological theme and not necessarily evil either.
To correct this a little, we (at least us Thai Theravada) believe that to want is to suffer, and thus in order to be free of suffering one must not want. However to want is apart of being an individual with individual needs and wants, and thus to be an individual is to suffer. So the only way you can end your suffering is by eliminating the self, not by becoming null and void through enlightenment. You don’t cease to exist, you simply become one with the universe, you eliminate the illusion of the permanent self. You exist, but you’re apart of all else.
There is no breaking of samsara because that would imply samsara existed, instead you’re letting go of the illusion that it, and a permanent you, existed.
Recall that time is a wheel. First it was an infinite time of YISUN, alone. The wheel was broken by YISUN splitting in two. Then there was an infinite time of 777,777 gods hanging out in Throne, and the wheel was broken by them telling 777,777 stories. Third was an infinite time of an empty Throne, broken by Zoss’ entrance and murder of the Prime angels.
Now, we are spending an infinite time in the demiurge war. Whenever someone wins, Zoss rolls time back to the start. It is always the same seven winners in a stalemate. Zoss’ chosen hero triumphs over them, something goes wrong, and Jag cleans up.
Jag wants to end this endless cycle of suffering and thinks the only way out is by ending life entirely so that he can remake the world. We know this cycle is different, but he does not
If an artist strikes a character on the page before them, is the character not doomed to crumple as the very medium of their existence twists and folds under the force of the blow?
One gets the impression that young Jaggy would not get on well with old Jaggy.
Sure, old Jaggy claims to have a reason for what he’s doing, but he’s following Jantris’ playbook just with all the knobs turned up to 11. Worlds scoured, check. Mothers (among others) dead and forgotten, check. Life extended through unnatural means, check…
Jagganoth doesn’t represent fascism, that isn’t what he is about at all.
Fascism is authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
While yes, Jagganoth is a dictatorial leader of his portion of the universe, and yes he does have militarism, and forcible suppression of his opposition(the other demiurges), he doesn’t believe in any natural social hierarchy, nationalism has no point to him, and doesn’t have an autocratic government, and as a dictator it’s less he is a political figure and more he is one of 7 “gods” which rule the whole of the multiverse.
To my understanding his government is an theocratic military commune, because it is a government in which the highest power rests in the god who rules the followers, it has an entirely military structure in which the strong are elevated by their own action not be any actual social structure which chooses them, and the structure appears to be a commune style because all work goes to the army, the entire society is the army, and the army society exists for the purpose of fighting a war to end the universe.
It is often argued that subordinating a whole society and culture towards military ends, while preaching a cult of war and self-sacrifice, is itself a frequent quality of fascism.
Bluecho makes a strong argument. And Jagganoth himself could be argued to be state to some extent. With rulers being immortal and so much more powerful than any one citizen, the line between them and the state would certainly begin to blur.
I think the use of the word fascism by 161 is more colloquial. A lot of people use it to refer to any form of Autocratic, bloody, suppressive, strong-man above form of government or state, not necessarily to the “exactly have a party called fascist party in Italy in power” or the almost exact Spanish Franquism. Jaggy could be those, and also Soviet Stalinism, and also Mexican Porfirio Diaz, Indonesian Dictatorship, and even USA Pentagon leadership: military men, bent on destruction, utterly convinced that they are doing it for the “better” or the “best values”, or something like that. I am sure that most of these “Strong Man Governments” where sick and avid of power, but they were also convinced that the Destruction that they were doing was for the better.
That’s a mis-use of the term ‘fascism’ and one that benefits true fascists by muddying the ability of people to identify them. Therefore Merl’s interjection with a definition of terms seems wholly appropriate.
I do not agree that Bluecho makes a strong argument. While mobilisation of society toward military ends may be one hallmark of fascism it is not exclusive to fascism.
Well, yeah, but language evolves a lot by “misuse”. I also complain a lot when that happens to some term that I would like to preserve its meaning (hacker is a favorite) but I cannot stop the Wheel from turning… the word fascist no longer implies a Fascist party with a bundle of rods in its banner, but it still retains the essence of the original meaning: strong, destructive hyper macho deadly men in power with strong military and police forces and expansive (conquering) politics.
I do not think it muddies the ability to identify this, unles you are a commentator from Fox News and thinks that Antifascist Anarchists are “the true fascists” .
Everything is fascism. The corpse pile hes sitting on is fascist, that dude who was dying that the duo talked to in the last page is fascist, the one goblin slave girl in Jantris’s bedroom is fascist, 3 of the strung up forgotten mothers are fascists.
The student is inattentive; we have seen her fall already. She lies dead, her star plucked from her brow, and added to Yaun-Who-Was’ own.
The first snare of seekers after Royalty is Empire: by fear of failure born, by fear of followers empowered, and by fear of death consumed. Nadia Om lies dead and broken by it, as, by the look of things, does Jantris Storm-Crowned. Both Yaun-who-was and Jadis escaped this trap, but have fallen at the final gate. All has been comprehended. All has been deemed unworthy. And thus, to exist in the fallen world is torment beyond reckoning. Jadis has escaped to past, Yaun to the future, in the hopes that there they will find escape from the Great Enemy, who eternally awaits them Now.
Witness, children, the last snare of the mighty, which is called Suffering. They have touched the blade of Royalty, and flinched in the grasping. The final, and most total failure.
The problem with Jantris seems to be that he thinks himself above the system and tries to cheat, not wanting to welcome death. Jagganoth asked Solomon to kill him if he could at every turn of page and apparently seems himself as just some kind of worker doing his job.
Soloman is simply an old man who commands a weapon of mass destruction and will never be removed from power as long as he lives. It’s a more relatable kind of corruption, for us.
Solomon represents unchanging stagnation, which is the bad side of pride. Nothing new emerges, no new endeavors, he has complete control and his vast lineage rots and continually passes away.
As we saw when his strength was not enough, no one else in his empire had any strength to call upon when Jaggy came along.
And who else do we know that ends up interested in blood alchemy?
Those who do not forthrightly strive to master their power will be subsumed by the same.
The wicked must be excised from the world as one would cut a parasite out of his host.
The wicked are the cyst one must take whole and burn once the wound is clean and dry.
The wicked are to be seen and disposed of.
One must put the knife to the flame, until it is flame itself, until it can cauterise the wicked, and melt his eyes, and sizzle on his tongue, and blot out his soul.
Seek not counsel from the wicked, Healer. Blood alchemy is forbidden. Take blood only when offered. Offer blood only when fairly asked for.
Herein lies the problem: Jagg’s motivations seem good here. Jantris is an obvious monster who definitely deserves what he’s inevitably about to get. But this is the slippery slope that leads to his current philosophy: he knows What’s Best, to the point where he’s appointed himself destroyer and rebuilder of all existence. He’s surrounded here by piles of corpses made up of people who almost certainly mostly had no idea of Jantris’ excesses. How many parents in those corpse piles? Slaves? Etc.
Never trust anyone who claims to know that they know what’s best for everyone else, especially not when they further want to be in charge of what happens to anyone who steps out of those lines.
I mean, I don’t understand how “I want to kill the guy who murdered my family and my community, turned me into a child soldier, and has done the same to countless others aside” is a slippery slope into “I want to destroy the universe and rebuild it free of suffering.” It seems rather easy to do the former without falling into the latter, actually? By the same kind of logic, my having eaten breakfast this morning was a slippery slope into me living in a massive palace filled with foods and delicacies gorging myself in extravagant and wasteful feasts while the world around my starves and rots, and for that reason you can never trust somebody who eats because who knows what their hunger will make them do?
Also, re: his soldiers “having no idea of his excesses,” having families, being conscripted, etc…. I really don’t want to have to explicitly make the comparison, but I’d encourage you to consider places where that same line of thinking could be applied to real life 20th century history and ask yourself whether you are happy with the moral implications of making this argument.
I mean, I just assumed everyone here thought “Nazis are bad” without it having to be explicitly spelled out, but just in case it wasn’t clear: Nazis are bad. Not every solider that has served under morally questionable leaders in the history of ever is the equivalent of a Nazi. Learn better metaphors. Also, you might have skipped over in my post where I explicitly said that Jantris deserved what was inevitably coming to him, but I suppose that might have inconvenienced you in your rush to accuse me of Nazi apologia.
See me, I just thought a consideration of what may have led a guy to think that wiping the entire universe clean and starting over under his ‘infallible’ guidance, whatever any of the countless billions affected by it might have to say to the contrary, was worth exploring, given that one of the running themes of the very webcomic we’re reading is “what drives people to seek power and how questionable are they”, but you do you, friend.
Not everything is comparable to the Nazis, true, but they can be a useful didactic tool; there are many other situations where one could argue that killing the servants of an evil state or warlord is morally justified, but the Nazis are a group that we almost all universally agree are bad, so they make an easy example. If someone says “despite the fact they served an evil master, killing these soldiers was bad for X reason,” it is easy to say “well, what other example do we have of soldiers who served an evil master, and is X reason applicable in their case, and if so are you comfortable with the conclusion that killing them was therefore also bad?” And because nearly all people agree that Hitler was evil and the Nazis were bad and their destruction by force was necessary, we don’t have to argue the basic premise the way we might if I had chosen, say, the White Army in the Russian Civil War or the American army & settler-colonist militias in the various American Indian Wars instead.
I think some consideration of Jagganoth’s character is both necessary and valid, but I think we should deny the trite teleology of “he unilaterally decided to kill this guy because he’s evil and this leads inexorably into his eventual decision to kill every guy because the world is evil.” He could have stopped here. He could have kept going and still done good. He could have been, dare I say, Based™, even. Nobody is forced to go Too Far, I look forward to seeing his story unfold, and what took him there besides Metatron and PTSD.
You would do well to cast off your tone of sputtering indignation; it really does you no favors in an argument.
Not that I’ve got any real interest in carrying this discussion with you further, especially since you don’t seem interested in anything other than backpedaling and strawmen, but I think someone should tell you that making a crap argument calmly doesn’t make that crap argument better. Nor does accusing someone of “sputtering indignation” via text after you’ve just engaged in reductio ad Hitlerum to what can only be described as a stunning degree.
[I mean, I don’t understand how “I want to kill the guy who murdered my family and my community, turned me into a child soldier, and has done the same to countless others aside” is a slippery slope into “I want to destroy the universe and rebuild it free of suffering.”]
It’s less of a slippery slope issue, I think, and more that opposition to evil is not the same thing as doing good.
The fundamental problem is that doing good is complicated, and it requires more than power. To do right by people, you need to understand their problems and desires. You need to understand the systems which thread through their lives and define the tradeoffs and resource constraints they operate under. It requires cooperation and careful thought. Fixing things and making them better isn’t a *choice*. It’s a *skill*. Nor is a society that takes care of its individuals an absence of evils, it’s a massively intricate engine of incredible complexity which has to be *created*, not *cleansed*.
And that’s the terrible failure of people like Yaun. They may want to do better. They may see a problem which can be fixed by destruction and they may even be right. But once they’re done with that, well, now they’re in charge of a society that’s *still perpetuating a ton of evil on itself and others*. And fixing that is a totally different skillset than what’s necessary to kill someone like Jantris. Hells, even identifying people who have that skillset is in of itself a skill which people like Yaun often don’t have.
Even if someone like Yaun wants things to be better, even if he’s so powerful no one can oppose that, all he can do is keep things at the best state which can be achieved with destruction rather than creation. And that? That’s still hellish.
Which is how you get this cycle. It isn’t a slippery slope, or a statement that wanting to kill evil people makes you as evil as them. It’s that doing good is hard and complicated and people who seek to do good by bringing down evil don’t necessarily have those skills.
Sure, I agree with this take. Destroying evil and building a good society are two different tasks that are individually pointless in the absence of the other; only in the unity of those two things can lasting change be achieved.
If you try to destroy evil without knowing how to build a good society you’ll end up with all the bad stuff you described in your very well worded post. If you try to build a good society without destroying evil you will typically find yourself being stabbed and/or shot by the people who quite like doing evil and would rather keep on doing it (those people are often, coincidentally, the ones who have all the guns and the money, since we have yet to widely implement a mode of production that doesn’t reward the ruthlessly antisocial). Only by doing both can humans liberate ourselves and flourish.
I think the bigger problem is that Yaun wants to Kill Jantris and he’s made it pretty clear that neither his soldiers nor his fortifications will pose a real impediment to accomplishing that goal. However, rather than simply head in and do it, he’s contented himself with standing around outside and murdering thousands of tangential nobodies.
He didn’t even try to minimize the body count and I suspect he doesn’t really care about any of the sins he listed, beyond an abstract sense of “these sounds make my hatred of Jantris righteous and get others to agree with me.”
I think it’s more “he’s a monster, so am I, and we both deserve what’s coming to us”. Remember that Yaun was part of Jantris’ band of Dead Men and almost certainly commited countless atrocities during that time. He thinks everyone who would fight for a man like Jantris deserves death, including himself. Unfortunately nobody has been able to kill him, and all who have tried have been part of the problem.
so, i agree with most of your post but i think that last part is ignoring what i perceive as a big part of Jag’s character
I don’t think he especially cares about Jantris killing people, what he sees as the fault here is extending his own life while being so close to his death, for no point but to live longer, clutch tight his power for powers sake
and i think later on, this is what his goals evolved from, for what causes people to act like this? the passing of time, to some extent anyways
Jag has no right to go around killing 5,000 soldiers a day, hell iirc another reason he wants to remake the world is as things are only the best butcher rules instead of the best ruler, but he doesn’t act better, he just does it anyways, he mourns that killers are the ones who rule the wheel yet in the end his final goal is for a killer to dictate the entirety of it, ensuring even in his passing his influence seeps into the bones of that new world, regardless of his intentions
Jantris probably did not replace the roll when he took the last tissue, and Jagganoth had to hold his cheeks apart while scrambling pants down for the new roll.
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “FIVE FINGER FIVE POINT STRIKE, WHORE”
Perhaps the trope dealing with dumb brute icons of war and murder is too strong in the minds of the masses, evidence and author’s expressed contempt for it be damned
Well, well, I think Jantris’ key has part of the syllable of royalty known as “Desire”, so now we can potentially finally see how Maya became a demiurge.
As far as I understand, Maya got her key from Au Vam – he leader of the Middle Army from the Yellow City. Jantris’ key will most likely soon belong to Jagganoth.
666 memer returns from grave to post horse shit on the internet
A couple typos in this page:
“Even, now” should be “Even now,” in panel 3
“hung” should be “hanged” in panel 5 (as they say in A Song of Ice and Fire, “your father was not a tapestry”).
This moment in Throne history looks to be when the division of the two sword saints occurred. Do as they were tasked and fight the unstoppable force, or switch to Jaggy’s side and attack Jantris.
Maia is known to be the more moral of the two, but with a hesitant quality as a fault. Inccubus is poisoned by the sword.
Knowing the future as we do we know
1. Jantris does not survive the war.
2. Someone will get the key
3. Jagginoth and Inccubus both have keys in the future
4. Inccubus gets along with Jagginoth well enough to be the 2nd in command
5. Inccubus does not deserve his key.
Maia will choose to kill Jantris but will refuse the key. Jagginoth will not want it. Inccubus will grab it out of desire.
The only two characters who have red leystones are Maya and Cio, and we know for a fact that Cio had a key, so it tracks that Maya did at some point too but returned to the purity of Sword Law.
We do know that Cio had a fragment of a key. A tiny portion of The Dragon’s key. Not a true key of the seven part world. I confess, even now, that I do not fully understand how Cio managed to achieve this.
I agree with most of your analysis, but I think the roles of Maya and Incubus are reversed.
Incubus has no moral compass, so he will turn on his old master and join-up with the more powerful Jagganoth in a dime.
Maya is clearly unimpressed with Jagg’s reasoning. She might agree that Jantris shouldn’t exist, but neither does she think that what Jag is doing – thoughtlessly murdering tens of thousands – is justified.
So I foresee that Incubus will join Jag, and Maya will be left with no choice but to reluctantly tag along. Despite that, she will be the one to somehow get the key, which will lead Incubus to become resentful of her, and to plot her downfall.
This is what will define Incubus relationship with Jagganoth at the start of the webcomic – Incubbus is Jag’s ally, because Inky sides with whoever is the most powerful. But Jag sees Inc as a worm, undeserving of the key, since it was Maya who originally got it from Jantris, while Incubus became somewhat of a Jantris himself.
I guess the answer to this could be seen by paying attention to the last two panels. Incubus is worried and afraid, Maya looks more like analyzing and a bit unimpressed by such “righteous” arguments. Both seem to be thinking, thou, and probably will answer the same thing, but for different reasons.
Black Dragon of the Red River Under the Eaten Moon
Except that all his self-righteous moral agrandizing completely fails to negate the fact that Yuan/Jagganoth, on his way to behead Jantris, is murdering his way through a whole lot of likely innocent men.
They are soldiers and attack him. I think killing a foe in combat is not murder. Nor any other unjustified kind of killing. Moreover, if they protect the life of the current head of government of the adversary.
It seems obvious that NONE of them had the slightest chance of actually injuring Yuan/Jaganoth in any way. So what was the point of butchering them all except for violence-for-violence’s sake.
Yes, “just following orders” isn’t an excuse, but if the ultimate goal is killing Jantris, what path do you take to get there? If an ant bit you heel, would you pour liquid metal down the entire colony just because it “attacked” you? I would say no. If you say “yes” then you are absolutely NOT the kind of person I would put in charge of anything.
Jagannoth doesn’t believe that he is ‘good’ or even ‘right’. He knows that the world is cruel and ruled over by those who are willing to subjugate and kill others for their own gain (or for the benefit of their masters/kings/gods). He was forced to become a man like that (by Jantris) when he was just a child, and he now believes he is a monster beyond any hope of redemption. Thus he intends to burn everything down and destroy the corruption, himself included.
Yeah, the world is nasty and full of bad people BECAUSE of people like him. It’s a self-fulfilling circle and anyone who thinks “the solution to all this violence, death, and destruction is EVEN MORE violence, death, and destruction” needs to do some real soul-searching.
I’m not saying that violence is NEVER needed- your alignment can be pacifist-stupid if you won’t defend yourself. But it should be a clinical amount of violence engaged in reluctantly. Not a massive amount thrown about indiscriminately and reveled in.
Yes… that’s the whole point of Jagannoth’s character, and of this entire comic. Violence breeds more violence, and as a result the world is saturated with it. Jagannoth represents the nihilistic response to that idea. In many ways, this is sensible. He was already forced into that self-fulfilling cycle of violence and there is no way to undo what he has done. He’s also extremely good at it. Although he detests what he has become, from his perspective the only way to stop the cycle is to wipe the slate clean, killing everyone who is part of the corruption, and then die. Being ‘part of the corruption’ eventually extends to everyone in the current version of the universe, but he might as well prioritise those who are most at fault and who stand in the way of his ultimate goal. Perhaps he is more of an idealist than a true nihilist: he does believe that there could be a world worthy of existence, but not this one. He certainly doesn’t seem to revel in violence, it seems more like he views it as an unpleasant task to be completed.
Oh right, you were talking about real life. In the context of the comic, Jag has indeed got a point, his motivation is clear.
In real life, if there was a powerful dictator who killed and enslaved people, who destroyed civilisations, should you kill him? Should you kill the soldiers protecting him? The answer is fucking obviously yes you should. If the soldiers surrender, show mercy. If the only option is violence, so be it.
First, they injured Jagganoth. He just can focus beyond the pain. Second, men are not ants. They can think and they have weapons. So they chose to attack and now bear the consequences. He also made high piles of corpses and they still attack. They could simply open the gates and respectfully let him visit Jantris. Third, it seems that killing all of the guards seems to be the only way in. I doubt Jagganoth would waste his time by killing 20.000 nobodies.
the youtube link goes to a vid that no longer exists?
Loads for me without issue. Perhaps give it another shot?
Works for me as well. The video is “Devoid Of Redemption” by the channel/Band “Pallbearer”
its Devoid Of Redemption. Vid available not in all countries
I am making $100 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $16,000 a month by working on a laptop, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply. Everybody must try this job now by just using this website… www.Moneypay6.com
no
never
I am making $100 an hour working from home. I never imagined that it was honest to goodness yet my closest companion is earning $16,000 a month by working on a laptop, that was truly astounding for me, she prescribed for me to attempt it simply. Everybody must try this job now by just using this site.. www.Moneypay6.com
is there a way to report these things?
BY THE NAME OF THE LOTUS, I HEREBY BENISH YOU, EVIL BOT, TO CLIFORNIA!
Sinistar, friend, arn’t you perhaps from region that may be blocked by some publishers at youtube? That may be the issue.
Bravo, Abbadon.
For once, I can actually sympathize with the implacable Yaun/Jagganoth.
Up until this panel, I felt more empathy with rabid xenomorphs than with the mustache-twirling, I-just-destroy-stuff villainy of Jaggy/Yaun.
Jaggahog’s hatred of the divine stems from an anarchic disposition against hierarchy, but devoid of the hope that such hierarchy can be destroyed whilst leaving the sentient alive. Personally, I’m not a fan of universal panocide, but The HOG’s quest for it is deeply rooted in sorrow and trauma, not delight and desire.
“DO NOT MOURN THE DEAD (…) THEIR DEATH IS A BLESSING.” – The Chakravartin, the Wheel-Turning King Who Has No Equal, Red Eyed Heir, Pankrator, God Eater, Bearer of the word BLADE and Destroyer of the Seven-Part World,
a dead boy who forgot his mother’s face.
He’s an Action Buddha.
Not leaving the choice to choose escape from the wheel up to the individual.
He knows they will not escape.
So he vows to break the cage itself.
It does make sense, in an “all is suffering” sort of way.
Think about it this way, the buddhists believe that existence was endless and made of suffering. The only way to leave the cycle was to become null and void through enlightenment.
Jagganoth thinks the same, just that he has decided to take the destroyer-god approach and cleanse the world. It not an uncommon mythological theme and not necessarily evil either.
To correct this a little, we (at least us Thai Theravada) believe that to want is to suffer, and thus in order to be free of suffering one must not want. However to want is apart of being an individual with individual needs and wants, and thus to be an individual is to suffer. So the only way you can end your suffering is by eliminating the self, not by becoming null and void through enlightenment. You don’t cease to exist, you simply become one with the universe, you eliminate the illusion of the permanent self. You exist, but you’re apart of all else.
There is no breaking of samsara because that would imply samsara existed, instead you’re letting go of the illusion that it, and a permanent you, existed.
“apart of” vs “a part of”… significant white space, cleanly reverses the meaning. Sukhi Deegayuko Bhava, brother.
Recall that time is a wheel. First it was an infinite time of YISUN, alone. The wheel was broken by YISUN splitting in two. Then there was an infinite time of 777,777 gods hanging out in Throne, and the wheel was broken by them telling 777,777 stories. Third was an infinite time of an empty Throne, broken by Zoss’ entrance and murder of the Prime angels.
Now, we are spending an infinite time in the demiurge war. Whenever someone wins, Zoss rolls time back to the start. It is always the same seven winners in a stalemate. Zoss’ chosen hero triumphs over them, something goes wrong, and Jag cleans up.
Jag wants to end this endless cycle of suffering and thinks the only way out is by ending life entirely so that he can remake the world. We know this cycle is different, but he does not
probably not, no.
I see Jantris likes em a bit thicc
more blood in ’em
Just because he’s morally reprehensible to the point of sparking a solid attempt at omnicide doesn’t mean he can’t have good taste.
Clapppin’ thicc goblin cheeks, I see
I reckon that if you slapped Jantris around the head his teeth would fall out like dice
I figure if Abaddon slapped *anyone* around the head their teeth would fall out like dice.
*Jagganoth/Yaun. I have no idea why I ended up writing “Abaddon”
If an artist strikes a character on the page before them, is the character not doomed to crumple as the very medium of their existence twists and folds under the force of the blow?
good point!
NO MORE DEMIURGES
Murder the gods. Topple their thrones.
Poetry to my ears.
Valor to the god hunters, glory to red water dreams!
We remember Intra’s Stone!
One gets the impression that young Jaggy would not get on well with old Jaggy.
Sure, old Jaggy claims to have a reason for what he’s doing, but he’s following Jantris’ playbook just with all the knobs turned up to 11. Worlds scoured, check. Mothers (among others) dead and forgotten, check. Life extended through unnatural means, check…
Guess what. such is the fate of fascism. And yes. That is exactly what Jagganoth is
“Jantris was evil and should not exist. But what if I did Jantris shit CORRECTLY?”
THE CIRCLE. PURE. INFERTILE.
Jagganoth doesn’t represent fascism, that isn’t what he is about at all.
Fascism is authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
While yes, Jagganoth is a dictatorial leader of his portion of the universe, and yes he does have militarism, and forcible suppression of his opposition(the other demiurges), he doesn’t believe in any natural social hierarchy, nationalism has no point to him, and doesn’t have an autocratic government, and as a dictator it’s less he is a political figure and more he is one of 7 “gods” which rule the whole of the multiverse.
To my understanding his government is an theocratic military commune, because it is a government in which the highest power rests in the god who rules the followers, it has an entirely military structure in which the strong are elevated by their own action not be any actual social structure which chooses them, and the structure appears to be a commune style because all work goes to the army, the entire society is the army, and the army society exists for the purpose of fighting a war to end the universe.
So yeah, decidedly not fascist.
It is often argued that subordinating a whole society and culture towards military ends, while preaching a cult of war and self-sacrifice, is itself a frequent quality of fascism.
Bluecho makes a strong argument. And Jagganoth himself could be argued to be state to some extent. With rulers being immortal and so much more powerful than any one citizen, the line between them and the state would certainly begin to blur.
I think the use of the word fascism by 161 is more colloquial. A lot of people use it to refer to any form of Autocratic, bloody, suppressive, strong-man above form of government or state, not necessarily to the “exactly have a party called fascist party in Italy in power” or the almost exact Spanish Franquism. Jaggy could be those, and also Soviet Stalinism, and also Mexican Porfirio Diaz, Indonesian Dictatorship, and even USA Pentagon leadership: military men, bent on destruction, utterly convinced that they are doing it for the “better” or the “best values”, or something like that. I am sure that most of these “Strong Man Governments” where sick and avid of power, but they were also convinced that the Destruction that they were doing was for the better.
That’s a mis-use of the term ‘fascism’ and one that benefits true fascists by muddying the ability of people to identify them. Therefore Merl’s interjection with a definition of terms seems wholly appropriate.
I do not agree that Bluecho makes a strong argument. While mobilisation of society toward military ends may be one hallmark of fascism it is not exclusive to fascism.
Well, yeah, but language evolves a lot by “misuse”. I also complain a lot when that happens to some term that I would like to preserve its meaning (hacker is a favorite) but I cannot stop the Wheel from turning… the word fascist no longer implies a Fascist party with a bundle of rods in its banner, but it still retains the essence of the original meaning: strong, destructive hyper macho deadly men in power with strong military and police forces and expansive (conquering) politics.
I do not think it muddies the ability to identify this, unles you are a commentator from Fox News and thinks that Antifascist Anarchists are “the true fascists” .
Everything is fascism. The corpse pile hes sitting on is fascist, that dude who was dying that the duo talked to in the last page is fascist, the one goblin slave girl in Jantris’s bedroom is fascist, 3 of the strung up forgotten mothers are fascists.
*HONK-HONK*
;P
The student is inattentive; we have seen her fall already. She lies dead, her star plucked from her brow, and added to Yaun-Who-Was’ own.
The first snare of seekers after Royalty is Empire: by fear of failure born, by fear of followers empowered, and by fear of death consumed. Nadia Om lies dead and broken by it, as, by the look of things, does Jantris Storm-Crowned. Both Yaun-who-was and Jadis escaped this trap, but have fallen at the final gate. All has been comprehended. All has been deemed unworthy. And thus, to exist in the fallen world is torment beyond reckoning. Jadis has escaped to past, Yaun to the future, in the hopes that there they will find escape from the Great Enemy, who eternally awaits them Now.
Witness, children, the last snare of the mighty, which is called Suffering. They have touched the blade of Royalty, and flinched in the grasping. The final, and most total failure.
To have been enlightened, and still know nothing.
The problem with Jantris seems to be that he thinks himself above the system and tries to cheat, not wanting to welcome death. Jagganoth asked Solomon to kill him if he could at every turn of page and apparently seems himself as just some kind of worker doing his job.
Of course, he’s the victim in all this, like all dutiful men.
As a general rule, all of the Lords got worse over time. Even the ones who were bad from the start got even worse.
Immortality apparently rots your brain.
Solomon seems to have dodged the worst of it and not become worse? Or he just decayed in a different way.
Soloman is simply an old man who commands a weapon of mass destruction and will never be removed from power as long as he lives. It’s a more relatable kind of corruption, for us.
Solomon represents unchanging stagnation, which is the bad side of pride. Nothing new emerges, no new endeavors, he has complete control and his vast lineage rots and continually passes away.
As we saw when his strength was not enough, no one else in his empire had any strength to call upon when Jaggy came along.
Worth noting that Jagganoth’s master plan includes erasing himself from existence. He isn’t above his own judgement.
just thinking, that key jantris has is a pretty similar colour to the one incubus ends up with…
Yea, you’re right on that actually.
And who else do we know that ends up interested in blood alchemy?
Those who do not forthrightly strive to master their power will be subsumed by the same.
Seek not counsel from the wicked.
The wicked must be excised from the world as one would cut a parasite out of his host.
The wicked are the cyst one must take whole and burn once the wound is clean and dry.
The wicked are to be seen and disposed of.
One must put the knife to the flame, until it is flame itself, until it can cauterise the wicked, and melt his eyes, and sizzle on his tongue, and blot out his soul.
Seek not counsel from the wicked, Healer. Blood alchemy is forbidden. Take blood only when offered. Offer blood only when fairly asked for.
Seek not counsel from the wicked.
Herein lies the problem: Jagg’s motivations seem good here. Jantris is an obvious monster who definitely deserves what he’s inevitably about to get. But this is the slippery slope that leads to his current philosophy: he knows What’s Best, to the point where he’s appointed himself destroyer and rebuilder of all existence. He’s surrounded here by piles of corpses made up of people who almost certainly mostly had no idea of Jantris’ excesses. How many parents in those corpse piles? Slaves? Etc.
Never trust anyone who claims to know that they know what’s best for everyone else, especially not when they further want to be in charge of what happens to anyone who steps out of those lines.
I mean, I don’t understand how “I want to kill the guy who murdered my family and my community, turned me into a child soldier, and has done the same to countless others aside” is a slippery slope into “I want to destroy the universe and rebuild it free of suffering.” It seems rather easy to do the former without falling into the latter, actually? By the same kind of logic, my having eaten breakfast this morning was a slippery slope into me living in a massive palace filled with foods and delicacies gorging myself in extravagant and wasteful feasts while the world around my starves and rots, and for that reason you can never trust somebody who eats because who knows what their hunger will make them do?
Also, re: his soldiers “having no idea of his excesses,” having families, being conscripted, etc…. I really don’t want to have to explicitly make the comparison, but I’d encourage you to consider places where that same line of thinking could be applied to real life 20th century history and ask yourself whether you are happy with the moral implications of making this argument.
Hey, they were only following order. Right?
I mean, I just assumed everyone here thought “Nazis are bad” without it having to be explicitly spelled out, but just in case it wasn’t clear: Nazis are bad. Not every solider that has served under morally questionable leaders in the history of ever is the equivalent of a Nazi. Learn better metaphors. Also, you might have skipped over in my post where I explicitly said that Jantris deserved what was inevitably coming to him, but I suppose that might have inconvenienced you in your rush to accuse me of Nazi apologia.
See me, I just thought a consideration of what may have led a guy to think that wiping the entire universe clean and starting over under his ‘infallible’ guidance, whatever any of the countless billions affected by it might have to say to the contrary, was worth exploring, given that one of the running themes of the very webcomic we’re reading is “what drives people to seek power and how questionable are they”, but you do you, friend.
Not everything is comparable to the Nazis, true, but they can be a useful didactic tool; there are many other situations where one could argue that killing the servants of an evil state or warlord is morally justified, but the Nazis are a group that we almost all universally agree are bad, so they make an easy example. If someone says “despite the fact they served an evil master, killing these soldiers was bad for X reason,” it is easy to say “well, what other example do we have of soldiers who served an evil master, and is X reason applicable in their case, and if so are you comfortable with the conclusion that killing them was therefore also bad?” And because nearly all people agree that Hitler was evil and the Nazis were bad and their destruction by force was necessary, we don’t have to argue the basic premise the way we might if I had chosen, say, the White Army in the Russian Civil War or the American army & settler-colonist militias in the various American Indian Wars instead.
I think some consideration of Jagganoth’s character is both necessary and valid, but I think we should deny the trite teleology of “he unilaterally decided to kill this guy because he’s evil and this leads inexorably into his eventual decision to kill every guy because the world is evil.” He could have stopped here. He could have kept going and still done good. He could have been, dare I say, Based™, even. Nobody is forced to go Too Far, I look forward to seeing his story unfold, and what took him there besides Metatron and PTSD.
You would do well to cast off your tone of sputtering indignation; it really does you no favors in an argument.
Not that I’ve got any real interest in carrying this discussion with you further, especially since you don’t seem interested in anything other than backpedaling and strawmen, but I think someone should tell you that making a crap argument calmly doesn’t make that crap argument better. Nor does accusing someone of “sputtering indignation” via text after you’ve just engaged in reductio ad Hitlerum to what can only be described as a stunning degree.
[I mean, I don’t understand how “I want to kill the guy who murdered my family and my community, turned me into a child soldier, and has done the same to countless others aside” is a slippery slope into “I want to destroy the universe and rebuild it free of suffering.”]
It’s less of a slippery slope issue, I think, and more that opposition to evil is not the same thing as doing good.
The fundamental problem is that doing good is complicated, and it requires more than power. To do right by people, you need to understand their problems and desires. You need to understand the systems which thread through their lives and define the tradeoffs and resource constraints they operate under. It requires cooperation and careful thought. Fixing things and making them better isn’t a *choice*. It’s a *skill*. Nor is a society that takes care of its individuals an absence of evils, it’s a massively intricate engine of incredible complexity which has to be *created*, not *cleansed*.
And that’s the terrible failure of people like Yaun. They may want to do better. They may see a problem which can be fixed by destruction and they may even be right. But once they’re done with that, well, now they’re in charge of a society that’s *still perpetuating a ton of evil on itself and others*. And fixing that is a totally different skillset than what’s necessary to kill someone like Jantris. Hells, even identifying people who have that skillset is in of itself a skill which people like Yaun often don’t have.
Even if someone like Yaun wants things to be better, even if he’s so powerful no one can oppose that, all he can do is keep things at the best state which can be achieved with destruction rather than creation. And that? That’s still hellish.
Which is how you get this cycle. It isn’t a slippery slope, or a statement that wanting to kill evil people makes you as evil as them. It’s that doing good is hard and complicated and people who seek to do good by bringing down evil don’t necessarily have those skills.
Sure, I agree with this take. Destroying evil and building a good society are two different tasks that are individually pointless in the absence of the other; only in the unity of those two things can lasting change be achieved.
If you try to destroy evil without knowing how to build a good society you’ll end up with all the bad stuff you described in your very well worded post. If you try to build a good society without destroying evil you will typically find yourself being stabbed and/or shot by the people who quite like doing evil and would rather keep on doing it (those people are often, coincidentally, the ones who have all the guns and the money, since we have yet to widely implement a mode of production that doesn’t reward the ruthlessly antisocial). Only by doing both can humans liberate ourselves and flourish.
Anyone capable of getting themselves made President of the Universe should on no account be allowed to do the job
I think the bigger problem is that Yaun wants to Kill Jantris and he’s made it pretty clear that neither his soldiers nor his fortifications will pose a real impediment to accomplishing that goal. However, rather than simply head in and do it, he’s contented himself with standing around outside and murdering thousands of tangential nobodies.
He didn’t even try to minimize the body count and I suspect he doesn’t really care about any of the sins he listed, beyond an abstract sense of “these sounds make my hatred of Jantris righteous and get others to agree with me.”
Bingo
I think it’s more “he’s a monster, so am I, and we both deserve what’s coming to us”. Remember that Yaun was part of Jantris’ band of Dead Men and almost certainly commited countless atrocities during that time. He thinks everyone who would fight for a man like Jantris deserves death, including himself. Unfortunately nobody has been able to kill him, and all who have tried have been part of the problem.
He may have posed the same question to the armies that he poses now to the two princes.
Also, he doesn’t seem to be “waiting outside”. It sounds like he’s on his way to their lord and he’s resting after the battle.
so, i agree with most of your post but i think that last part is ignoring what i perceive as a big part of Jag’s character
I don’t think he especially cares about Jantris killing people, what he sees as the fault here is extending his own life while being so close to his death, for no point but to live longer, clutch tight his power for powers sake
and i think later on, this is what his goals evolved from, for what causes people to act like this? the passing of time, to some extent anyways
Jag has no right to go around killing 5,000 soldiers a day, hell iirc another reason he wants to remake the world is as things are only the best butcher rules instead of the best ruler, but he doesn’t act better, he just does it anyways, he mourns that killers are the ones who rule the wheel yet in the end his final goal is for a killer to dictate the entirety of it, ensuring even in his passing his influence seeps into the bones of that new world, regardless of his intentions
Self-righteousness is important when one plans to murder the universe
I wonder what was the last straw that made Jagganoth seek the death if his former master
Probably the realization that he could pull it off. I imagine Jags has never been too fond of Jantris.
“If my god should fail me, I will kill him too.”
THE LAST STRAW
SAME AS THE FIRST
A LITTLE BIT SHORTER
AND A LITTLE BIT WORSE
Jantris probably did not replace the roll when he took the last tissue, and Jagganoth had to hold his cheeks apart while scrambling pants down for the new roll.
I like this one !
nah, screw him
Young Jagganoth makes an excellent point. Who would have thought him to be such an orator? 😀
Jagganoth has a way with words that butchers of his level don’t even come close to.
Hes a poet, the dude is a warrior and a death poet
HES EDGAR ALLAN SWOLE
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “FIVE FINGER FIVE POINT STRIKE, WHORE”
Bravo!
*enthusiastic clap*
He’s got a point.
Unexpectedly based Jagganoth!?
I don’t know why anyone’s surprised that Jagganoth, noted master of Death Poetry, is really good at making eloquent and reasonable points.
Agreed. He’s already demonstrated his silver tongue in previous book quite aptly.
Perhaps the trope dealing with dumb brute icons of war and murder is too strong in the minds of the masses, evidence and author’s expressed contempt for it be damned
as a crow enthusiast I am having a good time with this arc.
caw
‘caw ‘caw ‘caw ‘caw ‘caawww
ca caw!
Well, well, I think Jantris’ key has part of the syllable of royalty known as “Desire”, so now we can potentially finally see how Maya became a demiurge.
As far as I understand, Maya got her key from Au Vam – he leader of the Middle Army from the Yellow City. Jantris’ key will most likely soon belong to Jagganoth.
BORN TO DIE
GOD IS A CORPSE
鬼神 Kill Em All 1989
i am yaun, lion of dead men
410,757,864,530 DEAD PRINCELINGS
Is memory failing me or isn’t Incubus known for Blood Alchemy as well? Jantris may have caused a lot of second order calamities if so.
It’s suspected, but not confirmed I believe.
So, who else would join Jaggy at this point and help kill Jantris?
I mean, one way to end the slaughter.
Jaggonoth -> Soldier, Poet, King -> Jesus
Exist? Yes. Come to be or continue to exist… less so.
A couple typos in this page:
“Even, now” should be “Even now,” in panel 3
“hung” should be “hanged” in panel 5 (as they say in A Song of Ice and Fire, “your father was not a tapestry”).
Those corpses look much more hung than hanged!
Criminals are hanged, but meat is hung. And it’s tragically clear how Jantris views people.
i’m personally not very bothered by hung mothers y’know
This moment in Throne history looks to be when the division of the two sword saints occurred. Do as they were tasked and fight the unstoppable force, or switch to Jaggy’s side and attack Jantris.
Maia is known to be the more moral of the two, but with a hesitant quality as a fault. Inccubus is poisoned by the sword.
Knowing the future as we do we know
1. Jantris does not survive the war.
2. Someone will get the key
3. Jagginoth and Inccubus both have keys in the future
4. Inccubus gets along with Jagginoth well enough to be the 2nd in command
5. Inccubus does not deserve his key.
Maia will choose to kill Jantris but will refuse the key. Jagginoth will not want it. Inccubus will grab it out of desire.
it’s successors all the way down
Isn’t it implied that Maya had a key(s) at some point and then gave it up?
Feel like this one’s the winner. Maya will claim Jantris’s Key, and will realize the horrors that come with it.
MURDER THE GODS AND TOPPLE THEIR THRONES.
I bet its incubus, the little shit. The thing matches his color scheme.
The only two characters who have red leystones are Maya and Cio, and we know for a fact that Cio had a key, so it tracks that Maya did at some point too but returned to the purity of Sword Law.
We do know that Cio had a fragment of a key. A tiny portion of The Dragon’s key. Not a true key of the seven part world. I confess, even now, that I do not fully understand how Cio managed to achieve this.
I agree with most of your analysis, but I think the roles of Maya and Incubus are reversed.
Incubus has no moral compass, so he will turn on his old master and join-up with the more powerful Jagganoth in a dime.
Maya is clearly unimpressed with Jagg’s reasoning. She might agree that Jantris shouldn’t exist, but neither does she think that what Jag is doing – thoughtlessly murdering tens of thousands – is justified.
So I foresee that Incubus will join Jag, and Maya will be left with no choice but to reluctantly tag along. Despite that, she will be the one to somehow get the key, which will lead Incubus to become resentful of her, and to plot her downfall.
This is what will define Incubus relationship with Jagganoth at the start of the webcomic – Incubbus is Jag’s ally, because Inky sides with whoever is the most powerful. But Jag sees Inc as a worm, undeserving of the key, since it was Maya who originally got it from Jantris, while Incubus became somewhat of a Jantris himself.
I guess the answer to this could be seen by paying attention to the last two panels. Incubus is worried and afraid, Maya looks more like analyzing and a bit unimpressed by such “righteous” arguments. Both seem to be thinking, thou, and probably will answer the same thing, but for different reasons.
He’s got a point.
Except that all his self-righteous moral agrandizing completely fails to negate the fact that Yuan/Jagganoth, on his way to behead Jantris, is murdering his way through a whole lot of likely innocent men.
They are soldiers and attack him. I think killing a foe in combat is not murder. Nor any other unjustified kind of killing. Moreover, if they protect the life of the current head of government of the adversary.
It seems obvious that NONE of them had the slightest chance of actually injuring Yuan/Jaganoth in any way. So what was the point of butchering them all except for violence-for-violence’s sake.
Yes, “just following orders” isn’t an excuse, but if the ultimate goal is killing Jantris, what path do you take to get there? If an ant bit you heel, would you pour liquid metal down the entire colony just because it “attacked” you? I would say no. If you say “yes” then you are absolutely NOT the kind of person I would put in charge of anything.
Jagannoth doesn’t believe that he is ‘good’ or even ‘right’. He knows that the world is cruel and ruled over by those who are willing to subjugate and kill others for their own gain (or for the benefit of their masters/kings/gods). He was forced to become a man like that (by Jantris) when he was just a child, and he now believes he is a monster beyond any hope of redemption. Thus he intends to burn everything down and destroy the corruption, himself included.
Yeah, the world is nasty and full of bad people BECAUSE of people like him. It’s a self-fulfilling circle and anyone who thinks “the solution to all this violence, death, and destruction is EVEN MORE violence, death, and destruction” needs to do some real soul-searching.
I’m not saying that violence is NEVER needed- your alignment can be pacifist-stupid if you won’t defend yourself. But it should be a clinical amount of violence engaged in reluctantly. Not a massive amount thrown about indiscriminately and reveled in.
Yes… that’s the whole point of Jagannoth’s character, and of this entire comic. Violence breeds more violence, and as a result the world is saturated with it. Jagannoth represents the nihilistic response to that idea. In many ways, this is sensible. He was already forced into that self-fulfilling cycle of violence and there is no way to undo what he has done. He’s also extremely good at it. Although he detests what he has become, from his perspective the only way to stop the cycle is to wipe the slate clean, killing everyone who is part of the corruption, and then die. Being ‘part of the corruption’ eventually extends to everyone in the current version of the universe, but he might as well prioritise those who are most at fault and who stand in the way of his ultimate goal. Perhaps he is more of an idealist than a true nihilist: he does believe that there could be a world worthy of existence, but not this one. He certainly doesn’t seem to revel in violence, it seems more like he views it as an unpleasant task to be completed.
Allison, on the other hand, represents hope of an better alternative. We will see if she accomplishes this through violence.
Oh right, you were talking about real life. In the context of the comic, Jag has indeed got a point, his motivation is clear.
In real life, if there was a powerful dictator who killed and enslaved people, who destroyed civilisations, should you kill him? Should you kill the soldiers protecting him? The answer is fucking obviously yes you should. If the soldiers surrender, show mercy. If the only option is violence, so be it.
First, they injured Jagganoth. He just can focus beyond the pain. Second, men are not ants. They can think and they have weapons. So they chose to attack and now bear the consequences. He also made high piles of corpses and they still attack. They could simply open the gates and respectfully let him visit Jantris. Third, it seems that killing all of the guards seems to be the only way in. I doubt Jagganoth would waste his time by killing 20.000 nobodies.