She seems to be rejecting Solomon’s attempt to push her into becoming yet another Demiurge.
The way they ruled was that those with power ultimately decided the fate of the masses; White Chain wishes to serve creation and the people in it, instead of controlling it as SD did – pretty much rejecting his philosophy entirely.
White Chain is simultaneously rejecting becoming god-king and refusing to kill Solomon. This is the opposite of coincidence: she will not solve Solomon’s problems or the Republic’s problems for them.
1. She will serve the filthy masses because she has hope in them
2. Isn’t taking on his ideology which she finds self absorbed and barbaric
3. She isn’t trying to break the wheel just the harsh traditions of past leaders like him and her brothers
Essentially she is not in the demiurge business for domination but for cultivating something new hopefully for the better ie transformation
I like how White Chain denied his demand with both firmness and kindness. Could have left him there to rot, but still chooses to extend her support to him, try to make him understand what she has learned.
I dare to hope, her words will reach him this time.
And so, the Reborn Angel refuses to send the Once-God to his death… but makes him face it instead. What must that be like for one that has spent so long seeking Royalty? What does one feel when they have transitioned from Mortal to God yet back to Mortal again?
A nice setting for this conversation between these two Ancients !
One descending the Wheel of Fortune on the way out, and the other yet Ascending the revolving Wheel.
With a starkly flowering tree shedding petals over the scene of the Angel and the dying former Emperor; our dear Author/Artist weaves in poetic visual commentary on transience and the ephemeral nature of All Things.
Lovely.
“Sic transit gloria mundi.” “Thus passes the Glory of the world.”
It starts with a c, and it’s called civil service. There’s nothing fascist about the idea of politicians, judges, etc. as serving the state, that’s just how those positions work even in representative democracies like the Celestial Republic. She could say “the people” instead, but legally “the state” is more accurate. As for “forever”, White Chain is likely biologically immortal whether due to the nature of her atum or her status as a demiurge; Unless she gets some kind of term limit or resigns, if kind of has to be forever.
There’s nothing fascist about dedicating one’s self to the service of the State.
It IS fascist to say that an individual’s service BELONGS to the State, which she seems to be saying. Now, it would be full-on fascist to say that your service belongs to the State whether or not you commit it willingly. And she certainly has no right to commit those who follow her to the service of the State.
The power she has belongs to her, not the State, and she cannot escape responsibility for how it is used by delegating the authority to determine how it is used to the State. Using it to take over the State and centralizing the State within herself would be repeating the error that he has made. But subsuming your individual will to that of the State and allowing it to use your power however it will is also a serious error. “I was only following orders” is not a defense.
She’s describing on this very page how she wants the complete antithesis of that governing style, despite wielding superior power she will not be an autocracy like Salmonella Slave
This funnily enozgh reminds me of the matter of neo-royalists that have been cropping up lately. They firmly believe that an all powerful dictator and potentate is the only way society should be run. And that is what breeds people like Solomon David. People who would rather die than give power to others, who are afraid of a world where they are not at the top.
Our little lost diamond fears the loss of control and familiarity. He has built an immaculate and sterile empire that he believes would never survive without his might. Yet now at the end of everything, after having faced the inevitable and shattered, he is but a man with a daughter. It is sad that he does not see the beauty in this. We weep for him. Perhaps he will yet be enlightened by the light of sister White Chain’s will. The Wheel does not need rulers.
Do people like salami, as white chain is describing him anyway, even exist in reality? No names come to mind. I think his real life equivalents err more on the side of being territorial than afraid over a new regime. Moral, righteous intentions being the greatest concern of dictatorial power is largely a work of fiction
Maybe not kings or rulers but business men for sure have more than enough examples of people at the top who would do everything in their power and more to stay in power and who would rather see the whole thing crumble than not be at the top. Vince McMahon for example.
As much as Solomon’s empire collapsing so suddenly looks like a flaw in building the state “upon your body”…it still did last far longer than any historical states did. It still remained stable for an extremely long time.
If the wheel of history keeps going on regardless, and anything may one day be crushed beneath it…if nothing would last forever…then no foundation to a state would, either. And Solomon lasted far longer than most would – he and his empire both only collapsing when faced with Jagganoth. (And even then, maybe it would’ve survived even longer if he hadn’t agreed to abdicate, as was his own choice)
Perhaps things would’ve been better had the state been able to live on without him. If it were more easily able to ground itself on a new foundation once he was lost. But hey, has any other government managed at that?
Regardless, that doesn’t necessarily mean the state was a good thing. Its laws were certainly draconian, right? All stemming from Solomon’s inability to let go of control (which, to his credit, he *does* recognise), probably itself out of fear that Rayuba may be destroyed again. He fears the “ruin” his reign started from (itself arguably proof that “good things can grow from burned soil”), and struggles to trust in anyone else to avert that – making him afraid, for Rayuba, to let anyone else hold the power he therefore struggles to let go of. Reminds me of someone I’m close with.
I get where White Chain is going here, but I feel that neither she nor any of the others have yet realized the true problem here; the mere existence of this quantity of power concentrated in a single point is sort of the issue, not how it is used.
White Chain is caught between a threefold dilemma here. If she declined to use the word DIAMOND, living as a hermit on a mountain in solitude and contemplation, she stands by while the universe is ravaged by chaos and evil.
If she rises up to tame that roiling ocean, to bring order and justice out of chaos and evil, then she just walks Solomon David’s road again, becoming an immortal Tyrant whose blade of justice is held a hairs breadth from the neck of everyone.
But if she submits herself to the will of the Republic, she risks becoming an instrument of chaos and evil herself. “Go and bring the rebellious outer nations into the light of our enlightened nation, White Chain. Build a mountain of skulls of those who would continue to live in the dark. This is the will of the Republic, whom you serve.” What does she do then? If she says “no” then it was just her in charge all along, she merely allowed the Republic the illusion of being sovereign. If she says “yes” then she’s become an instrument of evil.
The problem is the word she bears, not how she does or doesn’t use it. It’s too much power concentrated into a world that cannot bear it. The universe would be much improved if the WORDS were returned to their source, since as near as I can tell Metatron hung out doing very little to harm the other races until Zoss came calling.
If dying dissipated the Words together with their bearer, maybe Jagganoth’s idea of taking all of them and then killing himself wouldn’t be so bad. Save for the minor detail of also killing everyone else first, but all plans can be improved on.
Even then, it’s not like the words are the only source of power, right? I mean, even before he had the word Diamond, Solomon was already more powerful than its previous user, because he knew ki rata.
I think this is more a problem with power imbalances generally, and that those can’t be entirely avoided. Power can’t be destroyed, only passed on – and even if, somehow, everyone had the same starting point in terms of power…some would have more of a passion for it than others, and would cultivate it more, leading back to the same issue.
I think the best option is simply for White Chain to do her best to use her power for good. As long as she has good judgement, good will come of that – and if her judgement falters (like with Solomon’s fear of giving up control, having seen the ruin Rayuba had been reduced to before his reign – at least White Chain can learn from his mistakes), well, time will go on and someone else will one day either put her back on a good path or take her power. Just as she took Solomon’s.
Sure, there’s no guarantee that she – or anyone after – will do more good than harm. Just as there was no guarantee with Solomon (although I believe he at least brought something better than what came before). But the potential is still there – and if she simply tries, that’s better than many people with power, so it’d probably still be an improvement onn if she doesn’t use her power.
(And I think it’d be better for her to follow her own judgement rather than that of the republic, but eh, I feel like my reasoning there would take more explaining than I can be bothered with right now. Tl;dr: my political views are complicated)
Yeah, it’s… I’m not going to say it’s a “problem” for the setting at a meta level, but its absolutely a problem for the people within the setting; this is a world where individual people can, through chance, skill, or sheer stubbornness, turn into literal one-person engines of destruction, capable of destroying entire armies or worlds purely with their own might and no help at all from others.
The fate of the universe currently turns on Allison and a tiny handful of other former or current members of the superpowered god mafia she can turn to her side. Nothing any of the teeming billions of the multiverse do matters at that level; its all down to a handful of unique super-powered badasses squaring off with OTHER super-powered badasses. Indeed, if those teeming billions got involved they’d probably just die terribly. Solomon David had disciplined legions and loyal retainers on-hand in Rayuba, in the shining capital jewel of his empire, and when the Demiurges threw down all they could do was die.
This is an issue we in the real world don’t have to deal with. We have no Royalty here in the sense that is meant by beings like Zoss. The most cultivated man on Earth remains merely a man. The cultivated beings of the Red City and the worlds joined to it by open gates become something… different, while still remaining terrifyingly human in their flaws.
I feel that this is the problem with the entire superhero/supervillain genre: their powers make them so significant that all the rest of the people in the universe combined amount to nothing but cannon fodder.
Hope is not a *specific* plan, but it is at the very least the foundation of a plan, especially given the accompanying dedication to The Republic.
As well, the three possibilities you stated are not the only ones, and are not mutually exclusive over time. Someone with as much power as White Chain can submit to The People as long as is needed and in the vast majority of situations – and can also suddenly appear and end a threat, problem, inappropriate uprising, what have you.
The problem there is that that’s still the illusion of sovereignty; the power doesn’t rest in the hands of the Republic at all if White Chain can unilaterally take it back into her hands and ignore them at any time. She’s just allowing them a longer leash than Solomon did, but it’s still a leash.
Good intentions cannot be relied on as pillars of any system, let alone to decide what its threats are and what constitutes an inappropriate uprising. Ill results from good intentions are far from being a hypothetical, since Solomon David and Jagganoth can say with full honesty that they are acting out of good intentions no matter how unpalatable we might find their way of doing so.
In defence of Pree White Chain, she lacks the foresight of already having seen republics with access to obscene, world-ending power and their consequences. But an atom bomb in the hands of the servants of the state and its people is a disaster — a demiurge is a walking nuclear stockpile all by herself.
I… kind of disagree here.
Her agreeing to help the state isn’t saying “I control the state” or “the state controls me”. It is “I am an ally to the state”
If the state declares an unrighteous war, and she refuses to support it then… that is the same right that any soldier might wield.
Sure, she’s a bigger soldier, but “I refuse to help you with this” is not the same as “I am in control of what you do.”
True. Even though some might argue that doing nothing is a decision in itself, a supersoldier who refuses the orders of the state is not taking control of the state. But a really clever statesman would frame their orders in such a way that makes refusing to carry them out amount to active resistance.
“I don’t have a gun and I don’t have even one wife and my sentences tend to go on and on and on, with all this syntax in them. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after “semicolons,” and another one after “now.”
And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man: I am not even young. Just about the time they finally started inventing women, I started getting old. And I went right on doing it. Shamelessly. I have allowed myself to get old and haven’t done one single thing about it, with a gun or anything.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination
Truly beautiful and poignant to set this discussion on a field of snow, out of which is growing a flowering tree. As White Chain says, good things can grow out of burned soil. Even in the harshest wilderness, the coldest barren waste, there is still hope, and the possibility of change, growth, and progress. Even in a world destroyed by the ravages of time, the horrors of war, the cruelty of tyrants, the excess of the greedy, and the ignorance of the masses, a brighter future is still possible, still worth fighting for. Wherever man draws breath, wherever life’s seed finds itself, there is a spark of potential, that may eventually become a great flame of transformation.
she have sworn to him, all else who learn kirata must die. whatever mental gymnastic, malicious compliance you want to spin, his meaning was clear. white chain besides being the state’s self appointed dog, is a self righteous oath breaker
Solomon David had also said before that “then after your training…you must kill me”. He was clear on that term from the start – regardless of the wording of the promise, context makes it clear this was a part of it.
So I guess there are two dilemmas here:
Would killing Solomon have been worse than breaking a promise?
And was it justified to make a promise she didn’t intend to keep in order to learn Ki Rata?
Bearing in mind the high stakes of the situation, with the fate of the multiverse depending on the battle White Chain is preparing for (it’s much bigger than either of them)…and considering that Solomon himself may not have been in a mentally sound position to ask for that promise in the first place, considering he was being driven by fear…I can’t really blame White Chain for her choice.
Though personally, as much as I love Solomon David as a character and am glad he survived…if I were in White Chain’s position here, I would explain my own viewpoint*, and offer to let him live if he chose to void the promise, but I would still agree to kill him if he insisted on it. I consider a person’s will and ideals (with promises towards them being the strongest “rule” on that) to be more important than their survival or wellbeing, when it comes to treating someone with respect.
(*I do agree that Solomon is afraid of what might come next (he saw Rayuba made lifeless before, and fears it happening again). And though I personally sympathise with his desire to stop the wheel of history, so to speak (got my own fears around the very idea of eternity), I’d encourage him to keep living anyway despite that fear. As much as I myself feel like, given an eternity, anything bad that can happen will happen – and as much as I fear that (and all the bad things I might one day do)…the same goes for anything good, and life is still worth living)
the history of the white chain comes full circle, she served the council of angels, she rebelled and now she creates her own council of people. how long will it take to “I recognize the council has made an decision, but given that it is a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.”
“My hand, and the power it wields, belongs now and forever to the State!”
I have a big problem with this.
Service to the State is honorable as long as the State is honorable overall. But servitude to the State is NOT. That way lies becoming a tool of totalitarianism. Her hand, and the power it wields, can honorably be used FOR the State but should never BELONG to it. It can only belong to her, to be extended to or withdrawn from the service of the State based on her own judgement as to whether it will be used in honorable causes. Individuals must never completely subsume their will to that of the State, regardless of the worth of that State. And while they can accept the authority of the State to direct their actions, they never transfer responsibility of their actions to it. That’s where “We were only following orders” comes from.
We must never forget the adage of that noted philosopher, the late P. J. O’Rourke:
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
They always are.
what the FUCK is she talking about O_O
She’s saying that she should be a tool for the state, even a corrupt one, because she hopes that regular people eventually get it right.
She seems to be rejecting Solomon’s attempt to push her into becoming yet another Demiurge.
The way they ruled was that those with power ultimately decided the fate of the masses; White Chain wishes to serve creation and the people in it, instead of controlling it as SD did – pretty much rejecting his philosophy entirely.
A peacekeeper, instead of a warlord!
White Chain is simultaneously rejecting becoming god-king and refusing to kill Solomon. This is the opposite of coincidence: she will not solve Solomon’s problems or the Republic’s problems for them.
1. She will serve the filthy masses because she has hope in them
2. Isn’t taking on his ideology which she finds self absorbed and barbaric
3. She isn’t trying to break the wheel just the harsh traditions of past leaders like him and her brothers
Essentially she is not in the demiurge business for domination but for cultivating something new hopefully for the better ie transformation
I like how White Chain denied his demand with both firmness and kindness. Could have left him there to rot, but still chooses to extend her support to him, try to make him understand what she has learned.
I dare to hope, her words will reach him this time.
And so, the Reborn Angel refuses to send the Once-God to his death… but makes him face it instead. What must that be like for one that has spent so long seeking Royalty? What does one feel when they have transitioned from Mortal to God yet back to Mortal again?
How very interesting.
A nice setting for this conversation between these two Ancients !
One descending the Wheel of Fortune on the way out, and the other yet Ascending the revolving Wheel.
With a starkly flowering tree shedding petals over the scene of the Angel and the dying former Emperor; our dear Author/Artist weaves in poetic visual commentary on transience and the ephemeral nature of All Things.
Lovely.
“Sic transit gloria mundi.” “Thus passes the Glory of the world.”
White Chain Refuses To Abandon Hope
Transcendence
an individual forever serving the state. I am sure there is a word for that, something beginning with the word f…
It starts with a c, and it’s called civil service. There’s nothing fascist about the idea of politicians, judges, etc. as serving the state, that’s just how those positions work even in representative democracies like the Celestial Republic. She could say “the people” instead, but legally “the state” is more accurate. As for “forever”, White Chain is likely biologically immortal whether due to the nature of her atum or her status as a demiurge; Unless she gets some kind of term limit or resigns, if kind of has to be forever.
There’s nothing fascist about dedicating one’s self to the service of the State.
It IS fascist to say that an individual’s service BELONGS to the State, which she seems to be saying. Now, it would be full-on fascist to say that your service belongs to the State whether or not you commit it willingly. And she certainly has no right to commit those who follow her to the service of the State.
The power she has belongs to her, not the State, and she cannot escape responsibility for how it is used by delegating the authority to determine how it is used to the State. Using it to take over the State and centralizing the State within herself would be repeating the error that he has made. But subsuming your individual will to that of the State and allowing it to use your power however it will is also a serious error. “I was only following orders” is not a defense.
She’s describing on this very page how she wants the complete antithesis of that governing style, despite wielding superior power she will not be an autocracy like Salmonella Slave
This funnily enozgh reminds me of the matter of neo-royalists that have been cropping up lately. They firmly believe that an all powerful dictator and potentate is the only way society should be run. And that is what breeds people like Solomon David. People who would rather die than give power to others, who are afraid of a world where they are not at the top.
Our little lost diamond fears the loss of control and familiarity. He has built an immaculate and sterile empire that he believes would never survive without his might. Yet now at the end of everything, after having faced the inevitable and shattered, he is but a man with a daughter. It is sad that he does not see the beauty in this. We weep for him. Perhaps he will yet be enlightened by the light of sister White Chain’s will. The Wheel does not need rulers.
Do people like salami, as white chain is describing him anyway, even exist in reality? No names come to mind. I think his real life equivalents err more on the side of being territorial than afraid over a new regime. Moral, righteous intentions being the greatest concern of dictatorial power is largely a work of fiction
Maybe not kings or rulers but business men for sure have more than enough examples of people at the top who would do everything in their power and more to stay in power and who would rather see the whole thing crumble than not be at the top. Vince McMahon for example.
In what reasonable world is this response relevant?
I am just saying, people like that very much exist.
Somehow I knew salami dave would start shouting about degeneracy eventually. He seemed like the type. Hope he manages to grow out of it soon.
Well he’s not transphobic so there’s that
Many who awaken to a brighter future, peer onward through shadows. Salami the alt-left Twunk, may she find peace in the end.
Futuro casal, onde um é o mestre do outro, onde os 2 sao professores e alunos.
Qualquer coisa diferente disso é uma afronta à respiração do universo.
Acho que a similitude e mais perta de Padre e filha que de casal…
As much as Solomon’s empire collapsing so suddenly looks like a flaw in building the state “upon your body”…it still did last far longer than any historical states did. It still remained stable for an extremely long time.
If the wheel of history keeps going on regardless, and anything may one day be crushed beneath it…if nothing would last forever…then no foundation to a state would, either. And Solomon lasted far longer than most would – he and his empire both only collapsing when faced with Jagganoth. (And even then, maybe it would’ve survived even longer if he hadn’t agreed to abdicate, as was his own choice)
Perhaps things would’ve been better had the state been able to live on without him. If it were more easily able to ground itself on a new foundation once he was lost. But hey, has any other government managed at that?
Regardless, that doesn’t necessarily mean the state was a good thing. Its laws were certainly draconian, right? All stemming from Solomon’s inability to let go of control (which, to his credit, he *does* recognise), probably itself out of fear that Rayuba may be destroyed again. He fears the “ruin” his reign started from (itself arguably proof that “good things can grow from burned soil”), and struggles to trust in anyone else to avert that – making him afraid, for Rayuba, to let anyone else hold the power he therefore struggles to let go of. Reminds me of someone I’m close with.
I appreciate this message being delivered with such compassion and empathy.
My fears are very similar, and sometimes I despair. I pray your wisdom is true, White Chain.
I get where White Chain is going here, but I feel that neither she nor any of the others have yet realized the true problem here; the mere existence of this quantity of power concentrated in a single point is sort of the issue, not how it is used.
White Chain is caught between a threefold dilemma here. If she declined to use the word DIAMOND, living as a hermit on a mountain in solitude and contemplation, she stands by while the universe is ravaged by chaos and evil.
If she rises up to tame that roiling ocean, to bring order and justice out of chaos and evil, then she just walks Solomon David’s road again, becoming an immortal Tyrant whose blade of justice is held a hairs breadth from the neck of everyone.
But if she submits herself to the will of the Republic, she risks becoming an instrument of chaos and evil herself. “Go and bring the rebellious outer nations into the light of our enlightened nation, White Chain. Build a mountain of skulls of those who would continue to live in the dark. This is the will of the Republic, whom you serve.” What does she do then? If she says “no” then it was just her in charge all along, she merely allowed the Republic the illusion of being sovereign. If she says “yes” then she’s become an instrument of evil.
The problem is the word she bears, not how she does or doesn’t use it. It’s too much power concentrated into a world that cannot bear it. The universe would be much improved if the WORDS were returned to their source, since as near as I can tell Metatron hung out doing very little to harm the other races until Zoss came calling.
I applaud her hope. Hope is a choice.
Hope is not, however, a plan.
If dying dissipated the Words together with their bearer, maybe Jagganoth’s idea of taking all of them and then killing himself wouldn’t be so bad. Save for the minor detail of also killing everyone else first, but all plans can be improved on.
Even then, it’s not like the words are the only source of power, right? I mean, even before he had the word Diamond, Solomon was already more powerful than its previous user, because he knew ki rata.
I think this is more a problem with power imbalances generally, and that those can’t be entirely avoided. Power can’t be destroyed, only passed on – and even if, somehow, everyone had the same starting point in terms of power…some would have more of a passion for it than others, and would cultivate it more, leading back to the same issue.
I think the best option is simply for White Chain to do her best to use her power for good. As long as she has good judgement, good will come of that – and if her judgement falters (like with Solomon’s fear of giving up control, having seen the ruin Rayuba had been reduced to before his reign – at least White Chain can learn from his mistakes), well, time will go on and someone else will one day either put her back on a good path or take her power. Just as she took Solomon’s.
Sure, there’s no guarantee that she – or anyone after – will do more good than harm. Just as there was no guarantee with Solomon (although I believe he at least brought something better than what came before). But the potential is still there – and if she simply tries, that’s better than many people with power, so it’d probably still be an improvement onn if she doesn’t use her power.
(And I think it’d be better for her to follow her own judgement rather than that of the republic, but eh, I feel like my reasoning there would take more explaining than I can be bothered with right now. Tl;dr: my political views are complicated)
Yeah, it’s… I’m not going to say it’s a “problem” for the setting at a meta level, but its absolutely a problem for the people within the setting; this is a world where individual people can, through chance, skill, or sheer stubbornness, turn into literal one-person engines of destruction, capable of destroying entire armies or worlds purely with their own might and no help at all from others.
The fate of the universe currently turns on Allison and a tiny handful of other former or current members of the superpowered god mafia she can turn to her side. Nothing any of the teeming billions of the multiverse do matters at that level; its all down to a handful of unique super-powered badasses squaring off with OTHER super-powered badasses. Indeed, if those teeming billions got involved they’d probably just die terribly. Solomon David had disciplined legions and loyal retainers on-hand in Rayuba, in the shining capital jewel of his empire, and when the Demiurges threw down all they could do was die.
This is an issue we in the real world don’t have to deal with. We have no Royalty here in the sense that is meant by beings like Zoss. The most cultivated man on Earth remains merely a man. The cultivated beings of the Red City and the worlds joined to it by open gates become something… different, while still remaining terrifyingly human in their flaws.
I feel that this is the problem with the entire superhero/supervillain genre: their powers make them so significant that all the rest of the people in the universe combined amount to nothing but cannon fodder.
Hope is not a *specific* plan, but it is at the very least the foundation of a plan, especially given the accompanying dedication to The Republic.
As well, the three possibilities you stated are not the only ones, and are not mutually exclusive over time. Someone with as much power as White Chain can submit to The People as long as is needed and in the vast majority of situations – and can also suddenly appear and end a threat, problem, inappropriate uprising, what have you.
“I could be a despot; I choose mindfully not to.”
The problem there is that that’s still the illusion of sovereignty; the power doesn’t rest in the hands of the Republic at all if White Chain can unilaterally take it back into her hands and ignore them at any time. She’s just allowing them a longer leash than Solomon did, but it’s still a leash.
Good intentions cannot be relied on as pillars of any system, let alone to decide what its threats are and what constitutes an inappropriate uprising. Ill results from good intentions are far from being a hypothetical, since Solomon David and Jagganoth can say with full honesty that they are acting out of good intentions no matter how unpalatable we might find their way of doing so.
In defence of Pree White Chain, she lacks the foresight of already having seen republics with access to obscene, world-ending power and their consequences. But an atom bomb in the hands of the servants of the state and its people is a disaster — a demiurge is a walking nuclear stockpile all by herself.
I… kind of disagree here.
Her agreeing to help the state isn’t saying “I control the state” or “the state controls me”. It is “I am an ally to the state”
If the state declares an unrighteous war, and she refuses to support it then… that is the same right that any soldier might wield.
Sure, she’s a bigger soldier, but “I refuse to help you with this” is not the same as “I am in control of what you do.”
True. Even though some might argue that doing nothing is a decision in itself, a supersoldier who refuses the orders of the state is not taking control of the state. But a really clever statesman would frame their orders in such a way that makes refusing to carry them out amount to active resistance.
Hell yes! Based messaging in comics! End the FED and down with the establishment. POWER TO THE STATE!!!
Behold, these poor little devils
pinned within this horrible machine, they are;
Would one ever think of them?
What might they possibly will?
May you reach heaven through violence?
I am but a student;
a simple little heretic!
How many of the 45 strikes was Salami Dave able to do when as an apprentice he killed all his masters?
“I don’t have a gun and I don’t have even one wife and my sentences tend to go on and on and on, with all this syntax in them. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than have syntax. Or semicolons. I use a whole lot of half-assed semicolons; there was one of them just now; that was a semicolon after “semicolons,” and another one after “now.”
And another thing. Ernest Hemingway would have died rather than get old. And he did. He shot himself. A short sentence. Anything rather than a long sentence, a life sentence. Death sentences are short and very, very manly. Life sentences aren’t. They go on and on, all full of syntax and qualifying clauses and confusing references and getting old. And that brings up the real proof of what a mess I have made of being a man: I am not even young. Just about the time they finally started inventing women, I started getting old. And I went right on doing it. Shamelessly. I have allowed myself to get old and haven’t done one single thing about it, with a gun or anything.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination
This is just the kind of thing I read the comments for, thank you 29.
White Chain fully understands how to play Lawful Good.
The first page is magnificent, with the resolute clash of wills, but the second one is even better for its pathos, its humanity.
This update is one of the very best of all. Thank you, Abaddon.
I’m seeing African aesthetics intertwined with far east scenery with two people debating about Empires and Republic in said scenery.
I knew Salami was an egg from the beginning.
Truly beautiful and poignant to set this discussion on a field of snow, out of which is growing a flowering tree. As White Chain says, good things can grow out of burned soil. Even in the harshest wilderness, the coldest barren waste, there is still hope, and the possibility of change, growth, and progress. Even in a world destroyed by the ravages of time, the horrors of war, the cruelty of tyrants, the excess of the greedy, and the ignorance of the masses, a brighter future is still possible, still worth fighting for. Wherever man draws breath, wherever life’s seed finds itself, there is a spark of potential, that may eventually become a great flame of transformation.
she have sworn to him, all else who learn kirata must die. whatever mental gymnastic, malicious compliance you want to spin, his meaning was clear. white chain besides being the state’s self appointed dog, is a self righteous oath breaker
Solomon David had also said before that “then after your training…you must kill me”. He was clear on that term from the start – regardless of the wording of the promise, context makes it clear this was a part of it.
So I guess there are two dilemmas here:
Would killing Solomon have been worse than breaking a promise?
And was it justified to make a promise she didn’t intend to keep in order to learn Ki Rata?
Bearing in mind the high stakes of the situation, with the fate of the multiverse depending on the battle White Chain is preparing for (it’s much bigger than either of them)…and considering that Solomon himself may not have been in a mentally sound position to ask for that promise in the first place, considering he was being driven by fear…I can’t really blame White Chain for her choice.
Though personally, as much as I love Solomon David as a character and am glad he survived…if I were in White Chain’s position here, I would explain my own viewpoint*, and offer to let him live if he chose to void the promise, but I would still agree to kill him if he insisted on it. I consider a person’s will and ideals (with promises towards them being the strongest “rule” on that) to be more important than their survival or wellbeing, when it comes to treating someone with respect.
(*I do agree that Solomon is afraid of what might come next (he saw Rayuba made lifeless before, and fears it happening again). And though I personally sympathise with his desire to stop the wheel of history, so to speak (got my own fears around the very idea of eternity), I’d encourage him to keep living anyway despite that fear. As much as I myself feel like, given an eternity, anything bad that can happen will happen – and as much as I fear that (and all the bad things I might one day do)…the same goes for anything good, and life is still worth living)
the history of the white chain comes full circle, she served the council of angels, she rebelled and now she creates her own council of people. how long will it take to “I recognize the council has made an decision, but given that it is a stupid ass decision, I have elected to ignore it.”
“My hand, and the power it wields, belongs now and forever to the State!”
I have a big problem with this.
Service to the State is honorable as long as the State is honorable overall. But servitude to the State is NOT. That way lies becoming a tool of totalitarianism. Her hand, and the power it wields, can honorably be used FOR the State but should never BELONG to it. It can only belong to her, to be extended to or withdrawn from the service of the State based on her own judgement as to whether it will be used in honorable causes. Individuals must never completely subsume their will to that of the State, regardless of the worth of that State. And while they can accept the authority of the State to direct their actions, they never transfer responsibility of their actions to it. That’s where “We were only following orders” comes from.
We must never forget the adage of that noted philosopher, the late P. J. O’Rourke:
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”