It’s not really the fear of death, it’s the fear of losing control. It’s what he’s always been afraid of; he ruled as a near eternal emperor because he was afraid that his empire would crumble if he couldn’t control it. Perhaps now, not as an emperor or a demiurge but merely a man, he can finally find peace by relinquishing the control that he has always clung to
Yeah but then he would have brazenly admitted that he WANTS to die, smth that he was afraid to do and most likely was not consciously aware of himself.
It would have made him look weak and THAT is was Salamy fears the most.
He hid in some ice dimension and always made sure to hide that withered arm even there where no one could see him.
Dave, Cursed to always look back, to perceive only the past, yet still rowing forward. Trusting that his firm grip on the past would steer his ship to the proper course. Even when all around him could look ahead and see the bloodied rocks.
Ho, frisbee player. If you are who I think you are, speak to the blonde swimmer down the road. If not, have a cup of pine needle tea. It is surprisingly nice.
Those that live in a system of oppression often cannot imagine anything else. To break the wheel, you need not a hammer but a hand full of compassion for those who would take it. Once you smash the wheel with the hammer, you can’t help but get some wood and nails to build your own; but if nobody is there to maintain the wheel, it will rot and fall to nothing.
I know I usually say something like “10/10 no notes” but genuinely, this is one of those pages that’s going to be in my mind for a long while. WC is so fucking cool.
I’ve had a small system working for comments too. There was one pretty neat one back on one of the Gog-agog pages (from a while ago, so not in this chapter or even the book) poetically comparing the characters of this work to those of Worm.
One notes that Pree White Chain’s insistence on a court of law and service under the state is just as much in line with old angelic thought as her former life was. A shame.
A big part of White Chain’s character at the start of the comic was that she upheld the law but no one else did, and so whenever she arrested people it would ultimately have no impact because the system she submitted them to was corrupt.
She was constantly told her persistence was pointless. Instead of bending or breaking to the will of others, she simply restructured the entire government of the multiverse so that her commitment to justice would be more successful.
This is in line with the themes of willpower of the comic, and is the absolute victory of her character.
She reminds me of Al Pacino’s character from “Scorpio” the last good cop in his entire jurisdiction, and his tragic struggle to uphold the law in spite of them.
It is a servitude of her choosing, something better than what came before. Any measure of agency is significant for an angel, even if it is a choice to serve a simulacrum of their old order. Change doesn’t happen all at once.
Service to the State and adherence to the Law is neither inherently good, nor evil. It depends entirely on the nature of that State and the manner in which it creates and enforces the Law. White Chain no longer serves the corrupt and pointless law of the angels, but a law of the people.
White Chain is also stressing here accountability to democracy, rather than to itself. Remember, the reason courts can be bad is because they represent a consolidation of power in the hands of the ruling class and the militant class. White Chain is making it clear that she rejects that kind of society, but her taking the law into her own hands would be much worse.
Plenty of communists could tell you that democracy is generally preferable to theocratic fascism. I think in this case some readers are just expecting too much of White Chain. It’s not like she’s a democratic realist who thinks she has found the end of history. She already seems keenly aware of the flaws in her chosen system and her chosen people, but it’s what she chose to support because she believes it is the next step forwards. Hardly a perspective that’s hostile to communism.
I don’t know what communists you’ve met, but White Chain here is being communist as heck. Look beyond your preconceived notion of “democracy” and see what she means by it – the will of the People, flawed as they might be, represented by a State upheld in justice. Her ideal republic is a revolutionary one that fears not the scorched ground but stagnation, aware of the price of transforming potential into a future, yet still willing to fight for it. She also makes a difference between the role of a leader as a servant of the, welp, the proletariat vs. one based on authority that would ultimately lead to further class struggle.
I’m not a marxist-leninist, we’re at odds in several key points, but what she says (and what she is as a character) sounds really familiar.
ONE WHO SPEAKS OF THE SECRETS HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW BEYOND STARS
If you looked into communism, you would quickly find that communists *are* supporters of democracy, and that a communist society would be a truly democratic one. What communists are not supporters of is bourgeois electoral “democracy”, because while on the surface it may purport to be democratic, in practice it simply funnels the will of the people into a false conflict, a stage play where the players are simply puppets in the hands of the truly powerful. Bourgeois electoralism is to democracy as pro wrestling is to actual combat sports
Maybe Plato and Aristotle were Demiurges who came to the earth to share the seeds of these ideas.
I’ve been pondering lately one of the sharp disagreements between them. Plato believed that an Oligarchy can work and be desirable, Aristotle said they’re fundamentally unstable and must inevitably fail. In my analysis, the Globalist experiment is ultimately the biggest attempt at Oligarchy in history, putting their debate to the ultimate test.
One point they BOTH agreed on, however, because they saw it with their own eyes, is that Athenian Direct Democracy DOES NOT WORK. It never worked, it never will work. Therefore just too many damn fools.
Communism is Athenian Democracy mixed with Hegelian Hermetic nonsense.
ONE WHO SPEAKS OF THE SECRETS HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW BEYOND STARS
First off, Athenian direct democracy was undoubtedly a failure, but this is not a condemnation of democracy as a whole. Trying to set up a democracy in an agricultural society with pre-industrial technology and a social hierarchy in which land owners stand at the peak and slaves at the bottom is of course doomed to fail. The only way for political power to be successfully distributed democratically is for economic power to also be distributed democratically. This is because of a core truth recognized by communists, namely that politics and economics are inseparable, belied by Marx in the title of his most famous work: Capital, a Critique of Political Economy.
Secondly, while I’m not a fan of Hegel myself, he was right about one thing: all thought, all ideology, is historical in nature, ie tied to its era and its history. Even Plato and Aristotle, for all their wisdom and insight, were not free from the biases and presumptions of their time. They could barely conceive of a world such as ours, much less make firm claims about the potential of our political endeavors.
What you are saying is not just wrong, it’s a logical disaster.
In ancient Athens, the class allowed to participate in politics was exclusively composed of adult males who had completed their military training. Communism cannot be either Athenian anything, as it is classless, nor Hegelian, as it predates both Marx and Hegel himself.
There is no “Globalist experiment” nor a debate, global politics are a result of self-interested states pursuing their own ends and adapting their systems to better do so. Marxism is one particular iteration of Hegelianism and of a specific type of socialist political/economic theory, it is not “Communism” itself, which is merely the existence of a classless society with no state or currency.
“I see you have one critique of your brothers, but are you doing the exact opposite of what they do in all things, like some sort of mirror world counterpart? No? Then you’re still just like them!” – General Antianatidae
Reincarnation is a thing for angels. Of which White Chain still is one, her flesh and blood body aside. 82 White Chain is also pretty bad about not dying herself, being on her 82nd incarnation.
Its not a thing for humans like Solomon, who will perma-die.
The Devils also experience something very much like reincarnation, just look at Cio. We’ve seen three of her so far, and I very much suspect we will see another before the end.
It definitely is for Angels and Devils, whether it also applies to humans and servants is up in the air. All we know for sure is that if it does also apply to them, there is less directly traceable continuity between incarnations than for the former two groups.
Well, she made a trans allegory, basically, love that she’s really showing her understanding of transformation as philosophy. The universe is always changing, and that’s part of it’s beauty. Is she older than Solomon? Considering that she’s an angel and all. She might not have the same continuity of memory due to the whole being reborn many times but we guess that’s also her point, is that despite that she has found a different, more compassionate, way to engage with the world, which to her is a greater strength and hope. The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know, and there is a sort of liberation in acknowledging that journey especially when we think of the autonomy of others too. I really love this for her. It’s really interesting to me to see how these two have bonded after the world visibly passed beyond his understanding and rule enough for him to notice, and he had trouble accepting that. They had an exchange of wisdoms, both teachers to one another
(in a way this is a long way of saying I feel like I’m reading some of Abaddon’s best writing, definitely up there for me in terms of stories that are in part about old realized ladies)
I been looking into changing career lately after 15 years. I’ve had fictional characters enrage me, make me cry, bring joy into my heart. But damn, this is the first page that has seen me cold and frozen in betwixt my step.
I was wondering how White Chain would get out of killing him. I knew she would, but wondered how she’s rationalize it.
Her last line her is apt. He doesn’t want to deal with the future, but lacks the courage to remove himself (which he certainly has the power to accomplish). So, he tries to compel White Chain to do it for him, and she’s not having it.
Part of his ire is due to the implicit accusation in her actions. She chooses to limit herself, and he . . . did not. She’s demonstrating that she is by far the better person. Again.
Is White Chain suggesting that Solomon might be able to continue living? If not, then her refusal to end him seems a bit cruel on its face. There is nothing shameful about physical decline or loss of power, but there is also nothing noble about a long and slow death brought on by chronic illness or injury. I was under the impression that Dave was already bound for the grave, but maybe that’s not the case.
Solomon is probably unable to fight anything big at this point but I don’t think he’s on his deathbed yet, he could either participate in the final battle find his death there or he could submit himself to the judgement of the people which wouldn’t necessarily result in his death or imprisonment (there were people who loved Solomon when he ruled his empire, maybe some still think highly of him, after all it’s thanks to Solomon if the world hasn’t ended yet) and at that point anything goes
Title attribute text on point.
I love that Solomon David’s repeating the same “but you’re such a badass how could you *not* want to be god-queen” line that Nyave was in Chapter 2 (and also in King of Swords, sorta, and also presumably for the duration of Allison’s Bass Pro Shops adventure). Poor White Chain can’t catch a break.
Great update, thanks for this one.
“Kill me! KILL ME!” The weeping man demanded. But the poor old crone merely smiled as blood poured between her teeth. She feebly held the handle of the sword now sticking through her. She didn’t meet his angry and desperate eyes, she didn’t need to, as she spoke thus.
“I curse you, now and always, forever where you go: I curse you with what even Gods and Mountains fear:
I curse you, now, with life.”
Not at all the point, but did White Chain get shorter post-transition? He’s practically down on one knee, and she still only comes up to his chest standing relatively straight. Compare this to the shot of them standing across from each other in King of Swords, where she comes up to his chest when they’re both upright.
White Chain’s height post-humanization hasn’t been drawn consistently, but she’s supposed to be shorter than Allison to the point that Allison comments on it in an earlier scene. But it’s just a thing that hasn’t been really consistently adhered to in the art. We “know” she supposed to be short, but how it’s drawn sort of goes back and forth.
I’ve always found Abbadon’s quirk of drawing the bodies of short people with the same proportions as a lanky man (but shrunk) funny. I imagine Abbadon references himself a little too much for some shots.
I’m very short and the way my hands and feet look are very different compared to what the hands and feet of a taller person looks like. My fingers are shorter, my palm is squarer and smaller, and it all makes a different shape when I make a fist. The way my feet and shoes look are different, the midfoot area practically doesn’t exist, my feet almost go from ankle to toe with little transition. Very different from how someone with large, long feet looks.
All things considered, these are minor flaws in the comic, and everything else is done so well I just think these quirks are funny.
I think much of this can be true, but isn’t necessarily for any given person. I also think you may want to see a podiatrist, as you may be flatfooted and that can affect your back.
Sort of a peculiar turn of phrase on White Chain’s part: “You built the state upon your boday – Now look at you. You are merely a man.”
Solomon is only “merely a man” in this context because he chose to be, and for reasons unrelated to how he ran his empire. (Sort of, I suppose one could argue that his insistence on beating down anyone who tried to rise above him and failed overall weakened his people, and that lead, due to decisions made by others to the situation where he decided to step down, but it is a winding road). Also, the use of merely is peculiar, since White Chain’s republic, to which she has pledged herself, is made up of and run by “mere” mortals. To use it in a seemingly demeaningly fashion seems to imply that she and Salami Dave are not actually too far apart in their views.
White Chain and Solomon both understand that people are fallible and frail, prone to failure. Maybe even doomed. The biggest difference is that White Chain still believes in them, and Dave doesn’t.
Dave trained White Chain, thinking her worthy of being his successor, despite knowing her to be weaker than him at his peak and likely doomed in her upcoming fight against Jagganoth. That seems like belief.
Yeah, he’s definitely starting to change. He says he’s trying to let go, but he still believes in the power of one sovereign individual calling all the shots; He’s just accepted that he isn’t going to be that individual forever. He can believe in a person, but he does not yet believe in people.
Solomon David also no longer believes in himself. He never believed in his capacity to endure a mortal life, for his fear of letting go could not be unwound from his fear of weakness and mortality. He could only believe in himself as a sovereign, infallible patriarch.
He did build the state upon his body. It’s “merely” a man because, well, no matter how powerful…
He’s but a single man. Meanwhile White Chain knows that the ideals she pursues won’t be lost if she dies. There’s power in reaching heaven through violence as a people.
That seems like something White Chain very much wants to be true, but which doesn’t match the current facts on the ground. Perhaps in a hundred years, if Jagganoth is sorted, it might be so.
No individual is perfect; everyone fails sometimes. But a system made of such individuals can be made arbitrarily reliable, even unto de facto perfection, simply by arranging enough redundancy and cross-checks that no single individual is uniquely load-bearing. There are tradeoffs in best-case performance, of course, but a resilient distributed system can often beat a brittle over-optimized one by finding ways to ensure that those best-case conditions do not become relevant.
This nuance is sort of White Chain’s point, I think. No matter how powerful Salami is, he is still just a man. Nothing can change that and, ultimately, that is why his empire crumbled. Even being an immortal man, he was still in that same category. A democracy – a state of and by its people, is a different category altogether, subject to different laws and outcomes.
I like how White Chain is consistently drawn as the most “beautiful” of the characters. Her face (post-humanization, but even before), is “angelic”, it’s sweet and pretty.
I imagine her design is purposeful, and giving an angel character both the sort of cool arc she’s had, with flaws, mistakes, changes, etc. but also keeping her true to the best traits angels are supposed to have in mythology is ::chef’s kiss::
Angels either are beautiful or eldritch horrors full of geometry that cannot be fully understood by a mere meat brain, while also being on fire.
Or both.
Look, if you have the chance to build a body that you’d be inhabiting, you’d build one you don’t mind looking at, or one that the locals will react favorably towards, right? Same here.
Plus, Angels can usually hide their more alien bits just outside of view.
Suicide in fear of death
It’s not really the fear of death, it’s the fear of losing control. It’s what he’s always been afraid of; he ruled as a near eternal emperor because he was afraid that his empire would crumble if he couldn’t control it. Perhaps now, not as an emperor or a demiurge but merely a man, he can finally find peace by relinquishing the control that he has always clung to
although, if salami dave calls her ‘woman’ one more time id love to watch her kill him
It’s his way of affirming his daughter’s gender, okay?
Gender ewwphoria
Trans Inclusive Radical Misogynist
Oh my gods 🤣🤣🤣🤣
“It is obvious that trans women are women, and thus unworthy.” – SD
dave over here trying to reach heaven through sexism
reminds me of a JelloApocalypse bit – “The existence of trans men proves that we don’t need women!”
“I don’t get it! How can someone with “gal” in their name be evil!”
—Vyse/Vyrsa, the eggiest sky pirate in existence
I know, right? Love that video.
Oh man, I love that jello apocalypse video!
“Look I ~get~ it. If you’re a transman.. I GET it. JOIN THE WINNING TEAM! DUDES ROCK!”
-Solomon David, Probably, while Thousands of Feet in the Air
“Let me remind you, we are thousands of feet in the air.”
So. Today i learned about Salami Dave existence.
And she called him a man. Unless you have something against women, I see nothing wrong with what he said.
Kontext Matters.
He called her “woman” as in “woman fetch me a beer”.
He knows her name and he wants smth from her.
White Chain called Salami a “man” as in “you are only a human”.
She does not use it as a depreciating nickname.
An while “woman” in itself is a neutral term, Salamis use of it is not.
If he wants to die that badly, he could’ve gone with “woman fetch me a beer”.
Yeah but then he would have brazenly admitted that he WANTS to die, smth that he was afraid to do and most likely was not consciously aware of himself.
It would have made him look weak and THAT is was Salamy fears the most.
He hid in some ice dimension and always made sure to hide that withered arm even there where no one could see him.
You are projecting here. On top of that vastly missing the point of the scene in favor of starting a gender war.
Get a clue and take it to where it matters, which ain’t here.
“anyway dad it’s time to check you into the nursing home byee”
“I don’t get it! How can someone with “gal” in their name be evil!”
—Vyse/Vyrsa, the eggiest sky pirate in existence
“Come on Dad, we’re going to meet some nice people in pretty white uniforms. They’ll make you dinner!”
Dave, Cursed to always look back, to perceive only the past, yet still rowing forward. Trusting that his firm grip on the past would steer his ship to the proper course. Even when all around him could look ahead and see the bloodied rocks.
Ho, frisbee player. If you are who I think you are, speak to the blonde swimmer down the road. If not, have a cup of pine needle tea. It is surprisingly nice.
Those that live in a system of oppression often cannot imagine anything else. To break the wheel, you need not a hammer but a hand full of compassion for those who would take it. Once you smash the wheel with the hammer, you can’t help but get some wood and nails to build your own; but if nobody is there to maintain the wheel, it will rot and fall to nothing.
I know I usually say something like “10/10 no notes” but genuinely, this is one of those pages that’s going to be in my mind for a long while. WC is so fucking cool.
I’ve had a small system working for comments too. There was one pretty neat one back on one of the Gog-agog pages (from a while ago, so not in this chapter or even the book) poetically comparing the characters of this work to those of Worm.
Look, if you find it let me know, a’ight?
If you find it, let me know, a’gog.
Bruh.
One notes that Pree White Chain’s insistence on a court of law and service under the state is just as much in line with old angelic thought as her former life was. A shame.
a bit but it’s better than becoming yet another demiurge.
You can take the Angel out of Heaven, but you can’t take Heaven out of the Angel. Especially after she sacrificed her life for justice so many times.
A big part of White Chain’s character at the start of the comic was that she upheld the law but no one else did, and so whenever she arrested people it would ultimately have no impact because the system she submitted them to was corrupt.
She was constantly told her persistence was pointless. Instead of bending or breaking to the will of others, she simply restructured the entire government of the multiverse so that her commitment to justice would be more successful.
This is in line with the themes of willpower of the comic, and is the absolute victory of her character.
She reminds me of Al Pacino’s character from “Scorpio” the last good cop in his entire jurisdiction, and his tragic struggle to uphold the law in spite of them.
Whether she accepts the title or no, she is Royalty.
One can’t teleport from the beginning to the end; one must take steps forward. This is the next step.
It is a servitude of her choosing, something better than what came before. Any measure of agency is significant for an angel, even if it is a choice to serve a simulacrum of their old order. Change doesn’t happen all at once.
Service to the State and adherence to the Law is neither inherently good, nor evil. It depends entirely on the nature of that State and the manner in which it creates and enforces the Law. White Chain no longer serves the corrupt and pointless law of the angels, but a law of the people.
White Chain is also stressing here accountability to democracy, rather than to itself. Remember, the reason courts can be bad is because they represent a consolidation of power in the hands of the ruling class and the militant class. White Chain is making it clear that she rejects that kind of society, but her taking the law into her own hands would be much worse.
I had not looked for such wisdom in a koboldcatgirl
ksbd fans when every character isn’t a hecking awesome communist
Plenty of communists could tell you that democracy is generally preferable to theocratic fascism. I think in this case some readers are just expecting too much of White Chain. It’s not like she’s a democratic realist who thinks she has found the end of history. She already seems keenly aware of the flaws in her chosen system and her chosen people, but it’s what she chose to support because she believes it is the next step forwards. Hardly a perspective that’s hostile to communism.
I don’t know what communists you’ve met, but White Chain here is being communist as heck. Look beyond your preconceived notion of “democracy” and see what she means by it – the will of the People, flawed as they might be, represented by a State upheld in justice. Her ideal republic is a revolutionary one that fears not the scorched ground but stagnation, aware of the price of transforming potential into a future, yet still willing to fight for it. She also makes a difference between the role of a leader as a servant of the, welp, the proletariat vs. one based on authority that would ultimately lead to further class struggle.
I’m not a marxist-leninist, we’re at odds in several key points, but what she says (and what she is as a character) sounds really familiar.
If you looked into communism, you would quickly find that communists *are* supporters of democracy, and that a communist society would be a truly democratic one. What communists are not supporters of is bourgeois electoral “democracy”, because while on the surface it may purport to be democratic, in practice it simply funnels the will of the people into a false conflict, a stage play where the players are simply puppets in the hands of the truly powerful. Bourgeois electoralism is to democracy as pro wrestling is to actual combat sports
You truly do speak of secrets both beautiful and true.
Maybe Plato and Aristotle were Demiurges who came to the earth to share the seeds of these ideas.
I’ve been pondering lately one of the sharp disagreements between them. Plato believed that an Oligarchy can work and be desirable, Aristotle said they’re fundamentally unstable and must inevitably fail. In my analysis, the Globalist experiment is ultimately the biggest attempt at Oligarchy in history, putting their debate to the ultimate test.
One point they BOTH agreed on, however, because they saw it with their own eyes, is that Athenian Direct Democracy DOES NOT WORK. It never worked, it never will work. Therefore just too many damn fools.
Communism is Athenian Democracy mixed with Hegelian Hermetic nonsense.
First off, Athenian direct democracy was undoubtedly a failure, but this is not a condemnation of democracy as a whole. Trying to set up a democracy in an agricultural society with pre-industrial technology and a social hierarchy in which land owners stand at the peak and slaves at the bottom is of course doomed to fail. The only way for political power to be successfully distributed democratically is for economic power to also be distributed democratically. This is because of a core truth recognized by communists, namely that politics and economics are inseparable, belied by Marx in the title of his most famous work: Capital, a Critique of Political Economy.
Secondly, while I’m not a fan of Hegel myself, he was right about one thing: all thought, all ideology, is historical in nature, ie tied to its era and its history. Even Plato and Aristotle, for all their wisdom and insight, were not free from the biases and presumptions of their time. They could barely conceive of a world such as ours, much less make firm claims about the potential of our political endeavors.
What you are saying is not just wrong, it’s a logical disaster.
In ancient Athens, the class allowed to participate in politics was exclusively composed of adult males who had completed their military training. Communism cannot be either Athenian anything, as it is classless, nor Hegelian, as it predates both Marx and Hegel himself.
There is no “Globalist experiment” nor a debate, global politics are a result of self-interested states pursuing their own ends and adapting their systems to better do so. Marxism is one particular iteration of Hegelianism and of a specific type of socialist political/economic theory, it is not “Communism” itself, which is merely the existence of a classless society with no state or currency.
I’ve never seen a commenter get jumped so mercilessly.
“I see you have one critique of your brothers, but are you doing the exact opposite of what they do in all things, like some sort of mirror world counterpart? No? Then you’re still just like them!” – General Antianatidae
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting a proper law for a republic that is fair and representative of its people.
White Chain is certainly not wrong for chasing an ideal with the understanding that no ideal exists in life. It’s about the approach.
You are strong, you will survive.
We are strong, we will survive
“You fetter yourself willingly to the base and degenerate will of the mass?” Solomon Dave now.
“The mass remembers! The mass is immortal! And most of all – the mass always wins.” Gog Agog when Solomon Dave got punched in the face and lost.
An interesting connection but I’m not sure how much it actually means especially now that Allison is a part of the mass.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the mass is instead a part of Alice.
Well, he didn’t say that the mass isn’t *powerful*, just that it’s base and degenerate. No conflict here.
*sigh* no, dad, kick your own ass.
I like that Ogram still mocked Het after all that. Just not THAT much anymore.
Is reincarnation a thing in this setting now? I thought when you died you just die and that’s it.
Reincarnation is a thing for angels. Of which White Chain still is one, her flesh and blood body aside. 82 White Chain is also pretty bad about not dying herself, being on her 82nd incarnation.
Its not a thing for humans like Solomon, who will perma-die.
It’s also not a thing for worms, or so I hear. Have you tried one?
At the end if time, everything starts over again, with all the same people, for the most part. So yes which I mean no.
The Devils also experience something very much like reincarnation, just look at Cio. We’ve seen three of her so far, and I very much suspect we will see another before the end.
It definitely is for Angels and Devils, whether it also applies to humans and servants is up in the air. All we know for sure is that if it does also apply to them, there is less directly traceable continuity between incarnations than for the former two groups.
“Also you’re kinda my Dad now. You don’t want to be the kind of dad who goes out to get milk, now do you?”
Ok ”Dad” time for your afternoon nap
Well, she made a trans allegory, basically, love that she’s really showing her understanding of transformation as philosophy. The universe is always changing, and that’s part of it’s beauty. Is she older than Solomon? Considering that she’s an angel and all. She might not have the same continuity of memory due to the whole being reborn many times but we guess that’s also her point, is that despite that she has found a different, more compassionate, way to engage with the world, which to her is a greater strength and hope. The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know, and there is a sort of liberation in acknowledging that journey especially when we think of the autonomy of others too. I really love this for her. It’s really interesting to me to see how these two have bonded after the world visibly passed beyond his understanding and rule enough for him to notice, and he had trouble accepting that. They had an exchange of wisdoms, both teachers to one another
(in a way this is a long way of saying I feel like I’m reading some of Abaddon’s best writing, definitely up there for me in terms of stories that are in part about old realized ladies)
Some of his best artwork, too. This page could be subtitled “The Many Faces of White Chain”.
You’re absolutely right! :3
I been looking into changing career lately after 15 years. I’ve had fictional characters enrage me, make me cry, bring joy into my heart. But damn, this is the first page that has seen me cold and frozen in betwixt my step.
I was wondering how White Chain would get out of killing him. I knew she would, but wondered how she’s rationalize it.
Her last line her is apt. He doesn’t want to deal with the future, but lacks the courage to remove himself (which he certainly has the power to accomplish). So, he tries to compel White Chain to do it for him, and she’s not having it.
Part of his ire is due to the implicit accusation in her actions. She chooses to limit herself, and he . . . did not. She’s demonstrating that she is by far the better person. Again.
Is White Chain suggesting that Solomon might be able to continue living? If not, then her refusal to end him seems a bit cruel on its face. There is nothing shameful about physical decline or loss of power, but there is also nothing noble about a long and slow death brought on by chronic illness or injury. I was under the impression that Dave was already bound for the grave, but maybe that’s not the case.
Solomon is probably unable to fight anything big at this point but I don’t think he’s on his deathbed yet, he could either participate in the final battle find his death there or he could submit himself to the judgement of the people which wouldn’t necessarily result in his death or imprisonment (there were people who loved Solomon when he ruled his empire, maybe some still think highly of him, after all it’s thanks to Solomon if the world hasn’t ended yet) and at that point anything goes
Title attribute text on point.
I love that Solomon David’s repeating the same “but you’re such a badass how could you *not* want to be god-queen” line that Nyave was in Chapter 2 (and also in King of Swords, sorta, and also presumably for the duration of Allison’s Bass Pro Shops adventure). Poor White Chain can’t catch a break.
Great update, thanks for this one.
“Kill me! KILL ME!” The weeping man demanded. But the poor old crone merely smiled as blood poured between her teeth. She feebly held the handle of the sword now sticking through her. She didn’t meet his angry and desperate eyes, she didn’t need to, as she spoke thus.
“I curse you, now and always, forever where you go: I curse you with what even Gods and Mountains fear:
I curse you, now, with life.”
Life to you, Riddler! One of the bitterest curses in all literature.
Beautiful update. You have such a keen sense for the essence of wuxia and use it so expertly in scenes like this.
Not at all the point, but did White Chain get shorter post-transition? He’s practically down on one knee, and she still only comes up to his chest standing relatively straight. Compare this to the shot of them standing across from each other in King of Swords, where she comes up to his chest when they’re both upright.
White Chain’s height post-humanization hasn’t been drawn consistently, but she’s supposed to be shorter than Allison to the point that Allison comments on it in an earlier scene. But it’s just a thing that hasn’t been really consistently adhered to in the art. We “know” she supposed to be short, but how it’s drawn sort of goes back and forth.
I’ve always found Abbadon’s quirk of drawing the bodies of short people with the same proportions as a lanky man (but shrunk) funny. I imagine Abbadon references himself a little too much for some shots.
I’m very short and the way my hands and feet look are very different compared to what the hands and feet of a taller person looks like. My fingers are shorter, my palm is squarer and smaller, and it all makes a different shape when I make a fist. The way my feet and shoes look are different, the midfoot area practically doesn’t exist, my feet almost go from ankle to toe with little transition. Very different from how someone with large, long feet looks.
All things considered, these are minor flaws in the comic, and everything else is done so well I just think these quirks are funny.
I think much of this can be true, but isn’t necessarily for any given person. I also think you may want to see a podiatrist, as you may be flatfooted and that can affect your back.
Pretty sure Salami Dave grows and shrinks based on his emotional state. Could be true of other characters as well.
Sort of a peculiar turn of phrase on White Chain’s part: “You built the state upon your boday – Now look at you. You are merely a man.”
Solomon is only “merely a man” in this context because he chose to be, and for reasons unrelated to how he ran his empire. (Sort of, I suppose one could argue that his insistence on beating down anyone who tried to rise above him and failed overall weakened his people, and that lead, due to decisions made by others to the situation where he decided to step down, but it is a winding road). Also, the use of merely is peculiar, since White Chain’s republic, to which she has pledged herself, is made up of and run by “mere” mortals. To use it in a seemingly demeaningly fashion seems to imply that she and Salami Dave are not actually too far apart in their views.
White Chain and Solomon both understand that people are fallible and frail, prone to failure. Maybe even doomed. The biggest difference is that White Chain still believes in them, and Dave doesn’t.
Dave trained White Chain, thinking her worthy of being his successor, despite knowing her to be weaker than him at his peak and likely doomed in her upcoming fight against Jagganoth. That seems like belief.
Yeah, he’s definitely starting to change. He says he’s trying to let go, but he still believes in the power of one sovereign individual calling all the shots; He’s just accepted that he isn’t going to be that individual forever. He can believe in a person, but he does not yet believe in people.
Solomon David also no longer believes in himself. He never believed in his capacity to endure a mortal life, for his fear of letting go could not be unwound from his fear of weakness and mortality. He could only believe in himself as a sovereign, infallible patriarch.
And now, merely… we behold a man.
He did build the state upon his body. It’s “merely” a man because, well, no matter how powerful…
He’s but a single man. Meanwhile White Chain knows that the ideals she pursues won’t be lost if she dies. There’s power in reaching heaven through violence as a people.
That seems like something White Chain very much wants to be true, but which doesn’t match the current facts on the ground. Perhaps in a hundred years, if Jagganoth is sorted, it might be so.
Jagganoth will either be sorted, or the Wheel will start anew. And what is another spin, if not a next chance to break it?
No individual is perfect; everyone fails sometimes. But a system made of such individuals can be made arbitrarily reliable, even unto de facto perfection, simply by arranging enough redundancy and cross-checks that no single individual is uniquely load-bearing. There are tradeoffs in best-case performance, of course, but a resilient distributed system can often beat a brittle over-optimized one by finding ways to ensure that those best-case conditions do not become relevant.
This nuance is sort of White Chain’s point, I think. No matter how powerful Salami is, he is still just a man. Nothing can change that and, ultimately, that is why his empire crumbled. Even being an immortal man, he was still in that same category. A democracy – a state of and by its people, is a different category altogether, subject to different laws and outcomes.
Wheel-breaking chain.
There used to be a technique in that vein.
I like how White Chain is consistently drawn as the most “beautiful” of the characters. Her face (post-humanization, but even before), is “angelic”, it’s sweet and pretty.
I imagine her design is purposeful, and giving an angel character both the sort of cool arc she’s had, with flaws, mistakes, changes, etc. but also keeping her true to the best traits angels are supposed to have in mythology is ::chef’s kiss::
Angels either are beautiful or eldritch horrors full of geometry that cannot be fully understood by a mere meat brain, while also being on fire.
Or both.
Look, if you have the chance to build a body that you’d be inhabiting, you’d build one you don’t mind looking at, or one that the locals will react favorably towards, right? Same here.
Plus, Angels can usually hide their more alien bits just outside of view.