WHEEL SMASHING LORD 3-67
Chapter: 3
“Oh aye, you’ve fought many a doughty warrior. Monks vested in shimmering atum, warriors wielding caraptine plate and dragonbone swords. Do you think you’d last one second against a real immortal?”
– Graves, Belligerent Knight
Goggy is as inscrutible as ever, what a pal!
I think I’ve scrutinized Gog Agog pretty well though.
Out of all the demiurges, Gog seems to the only one who survives every turn of the Wheel. There was a time even before Jagganoth. I think Gog predates even that. Who knows how far Gog goes back?
That might explain why Gog is obsessed/in love/in lust with Allison. In her, Gog sees something might actually be a real threat, a *real* end to the ancient order of things.
Bro she just told us how far she goes back.
Wait I’m replying on the wrong goddamned day again lol
Anyway we know now but she goes back to the very beginning. Worm is OLD old
Any time a keywielder dies and someone does not claim it, it is left for the Worms.
I can fix her.
I can love her as she is
Whatever’s wrong with her is hotter
I can make her worse.
She can make me her
She can worm my heart
She
SHE’S FIGURED OUT
ALL HER DOUBTS WERE SOMEONE ELSE’S POINT OF VIEW
She’s figured out
All her doughnuts were someone else’s.
S
This was the best one of the chain
Well I can hold her like THIS! *Lifts her up like a Chonky cat*
I’m an I can make her worse kinda guy but I definitely can’t and you can’t either but that’s okay
To love her is to become her.
She can fix me.
I can make her worse.
Who knows how far she goes back? We do. To the beginning. She bloody says as much lol
Oops wrong post
Committed to the bit, huh?
And what bit is this? Performer? Copycat? Multi-headed hydra?
I think the answer is “yes”
I feel the answer will always be “yes”.
THE bit, the bit to end all bits. The bit that is so all-encompassing that it never ends, never began, and can never even be described. The cosmic joke, the reific gaff, the existential guffaw!
She’s just a baby collective hive mind that doesn’t want to grow up. That is, she isn’t a mass of “worms” as such. Look at those little wrigglers carefully, she’s a mass of GRUBS, insect larvae! Why don’t they ever appear in in their adult forms?
What if they turn into something like a mayfly, beautiful but dead in a day. This terrifies her, the one thing that could actually kill her, because they would all die in a day. I think if she were to lose her key, she’d all turn into a beautiful swarm of gossamer wings, then die.
Keep in mind: she’s made entirely of worms. Worms don’t have a neck to break. The broken neck is part of the performance.
Allison appears to have not figured this out.
Points out that The King still has humanity left in her when she is shocked, even though she knows it’s not possible for Gog-Monroe to hurt itself physically.
Nnnngh this is so good, I missed the Worm
Username checks out. Personally I prefer my worms dead and divested of divinity.
Your idea of what divinity is doesn’t work
Certainly it doesn’t worm
You would think Gog would have absorbed a few acrobats at some point
You can do an extra half-flip if you don’t care about sticking the landing.
She did. Breaking her neck in front of Allison is just funnier.
As seen in Roger Rabbit:
Detective: You mean you could have freed yourself at any time?!
Roger: No! Only when it was funny.
Hard to have muscle memory when you don’t have, well, muscles.
Wait…
worm memory? 😀
Stupid? You mean… not ignorant? Go on…
The simpering god afraid of her court?
He God-King who refused to ever teach anyone how do to anything because he wanted them dependent and called it a cage he was trapped in?
The old man eternally bemoaning the sins of his past and doing nothing more?
That pathetic Blood Demon fool who lives in fear?
The Red God who wants to end the world because HE is unhappy?
The scared little girl frozen in time?
Autor says she’d be the most powerful of them if she weren’t insane.
She is the smartest, and maybe the wisest, of them all.
Prim Tarod is observent
She also did (does?) want everyone to get along and be happy, in her own weird, wormy way.
But because the other gods looked down on her for her silly personality, they didn’t take her seriously. And that’s what caused them to lose in the end. To be honest, I think part of the reason Gog likes Alison (besides her destabilizing the rule of the other gods) is because Alison respects her more than the other gods did, even if that respect was born out of fear.
Because remember:
The mass always wins
Well…there it is….
Observant, but the S.R.A (Solomon Relations Authority) has detected an incorrect interpretation of his character. Correct your statement to mention that Solomon’s cage, although self-made, is very much real, as is in accordance with Article 7 Section 5 of the Karate God Codes, or face the Divine Judgement of a $300 fine.
Wise she may be, but still stupid in her own way. Allison has learned one lesson that I think Gog has not.
Allison knows she will one day die. Concretely, in fact. She persists despite of that, or perhaps, because of it. I cannot even say that she has ’embraced’ her mortality–for she also doesn’t think of death much at all. Her mortality is just another part of life.
Has Gog, she-who-has-died-uncounted, without dying?
Does Gog have the ability to care about things outside of Herself? To enjoy something ephemeral, that is not a part of herself, not taken into herself, persists without her?
It is the one folly keeping her from true Royalty. For Gog, her immortality and persistence, even in the face of the resetting of the wheel, is the shackle, and she is too afraid to let go of it.
Unless Gog donates multiple detailers and colorists, I don’t see how you keep posting such intricate comics so often!
Abbadon is actually just another Gog. All will be Gog
Hopefully we get some more Gog gags in the next post. It’s always a delight to see the worm queen
took me a bit wondering why gogs asking about a hose before I put it together that the “s” was actually a wiggly “L” referring to what happened to Allison’s eye.
It might be hose sized, but certainly a place that doesn’t inspire anything other than eww and kicky discomfort for a hose to be there.
Its Gog all the way down yall
Nah, she stops at the floor.
“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:
where the WORM dieth not….”
You know, when her neck went Krak, I have to imagine Gog deliberately built some bones into that body beforehand to get a proper crack sound instead of just a wormy splorch.
That was a body. Gog’s worms possess the bodies of their host and probably eat through them, and uses their mass to hide what they’ve anyway devoured. When sincediscarding what little remains after. That’s why she’s always recruiting followers.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the Gog and Agog merely Players.
Bravo!
Ok, ok, question.
How intentional was gog falling on their neck?
Oh, deary, it’s all part of the SHOW!
(Seriously though, that was entirely intentional, and done to prove a point — which we will no doubt learn more about, in next week’s episode! Stay tuned!)
Gog Agog breaks her own necks the way some people crack their knuckles. Archdemons can have some pretty terrible mannerisms and get away with it I guess. Is it a weird flex or like scratching a weird horrible itch?
Pretty sure she’s answering Allison’s question, in that she doesn’t care about the end of the world because she expects to survive it.
It’s fully intentional, a pantomime about the other gods’ stupidity. Look at how she acts in the panel before the neck break. The poise, the attitude. Her key. She’s mimicking how the other demiurges act so decorous, so almighty, so sure of themselves as they jump straight down to their STUPID death.
Show not tell: Gog is indestructible.
It is an effective way to make a point, but I still wonder how indestructible she really is. Could a brutal enough eradication campaign purge all of her hosts?
A fascinating question! Taking into account all of the nuances, the shades of light and dark, even the veritable circumstances, the answer lies somewhere between, “It depends,” and “No.”
Maybe some horrible divine disease, which is targeting Gog specifically can help? Fight parasite with parasites, fight poison with poison.
Preem Chaos is wise. The cure would necessarily outdo the disease. Quickly, to the laboratory!
Plot twist —
Gog Agog first arose as an earlier attempt at curing a different condition.
Unintended consequences, and all that. 😜
It seems statistically unlikely. Unlike the other Demiurges, the Worm controls her 1/7th of the universe personally and, presumably, can reproduce herself at least as rapidly as your standard earthworm.
Worms double in population every 60 days.
In order to exterminate Gog-Agog, one would need to destroy more than .23% of the life in the Wheel per day.
That’s 1,852 universes purged of Gog-Agog- who will doubtless be defending herself fairly effectively- in a single day.
The logistics for this sort of operation simply don’t exist.
I *really* love that you brought actual math to bear to this problem.
screw the math, Gog was the only one to make it out of fight between all of them UNSCATHED, literally as all them were either murdered, twisted beyond repair, or mangled, or switching sides for survival. They remained as they always have, the mass may lose a body, but the Mass always wins
She broke her neck in honor of queen mother Sasha Colby
Sasha would play a fierce Mottom in the live adaptation
Okay I’m definitely stealing that entrance for a dnd game at some point. Holy shit how creepy and awesome.
Ooh– just realized there’s carpet below her in the last three panels, but none when she falls. i will chalk it up to wormpowers
I wonder if she actually is disgusted by her injuries. I could see it. She is literally immune to such things. She can never permanently lose a body part, or suffer any permanent harm barring total annihilation. She lacks all such consequences.
So, perhaps, a being she is willing to see as another being suffering said consequences would cause disgust reaction through selective empathy.
Remember the announcers during the Ring of Power? Multiple Gog Agogs were expressing different variations of her personality. As I see it, part of her bit is using different instances of herself to express different sides of her personality (similar to the different sides of Alison’s personality inside her head during the Yre heist, but manifested in the physical world).
So, to my mind, the question isn’t whether Gog Agog in her general entirety is authentically disgusted by Allison’s missing eye. The question is whether this particular manifestation of her that seems themed around glitz, glamour and showmanship is disgusted. I’d say it is, because it’s the side of her that’s about beautiful appearances. I’d also think there are other sides of her that wouldn’t be bothered at all.
Stuck the landing.
very sticky landing. sticky and wet.
I would give it 9/10 as performane go but I have to deduct 2 points for the failed landing, so 7/10 it is.
Oh nonono, the landing was perfect right down to the very last twitch.
Extra points were awarded for the artistic splaying of the limbs, quite avant-garde!
You notice how she’s also mooning Allison? Given everything (Marilyn Monroe reference, looking somewhat like Allison used to, the flirting) I’m sure that’s also intentional.
Gog seems to be a body perfectionist. All her adherents probably get “perfected” when they take the worm. She works on her appearance endlessly. Can make multiple copies of herself, yet does not like it when the others blow up one of her bodies. Yet here she kills a copy for a bit. If Gog Agog does it then it’s alright.
Her complaint when one of her bodies got blown up at the meeting was “I was WORKING on that face!”, so she might not mind as much if the body in question isn’t being used for something she wants uninterrupted.
>does not like it when the others blow up one of her bodies. Yet here she kills a copy for a bit. If Gog Agog does it then it’s alright.
That is the typical paradigm with most, if not all, deities. A close reading of their oldest works will often reveal the moral dubiousness of their character. i.e.—It’s not murder if it’s the firstborn of Egyptians killed, genocide is an acceptable means to acquire the promised land, killing everyone but one family to get rid of a problem is good, etc, etc.
You find the same morality and sense of justice trickles down to mere mortals in leadership positions. i.e.—When the President does it, it’s not illegal. I can’t open my mega-church to shelter people from the hurricane, our rugs are damp. The President has total immunity from prosecution, and so on.
WRT the Tenth Plague in particular, a combination of the active Egyptian genocide against Israelite kids and the fact that the Godhead are running an afterlife no worse than ‘gives you a perfect memory and affective empathy and the Atonement if you need to repent of some things’ really does make it different if they’re doing it.
The commandments to drive the former inhabitants out of the promised land do seem to have had some murderous and possibly deliberate mistranslation in the intervening millennia of telephone-game, though.
That said, I’m not sure it’s actually relevant here. Gog-Agog cares about spectacle and aesthetic. Using a body as suicide art is different from vandalizing art in progress. I suspect she’d be fine with being punched into the sky or smashed with a giant hammer, if it was actually playing along with her routine to do so.
Horatio is observant.
Allison: I’ve seen the Wheel, I saw it all. Nothing surprises me anymore.
Gog: *does the regular Gog thing*
Allison: …Holy crap.
P.S. Love the worm tree.
Gog: Yes, the Time Wheel, we’ve all seen it
You know, I’m quite confused about gog’s current gimmick: is it still clowns, and she’s just expended it to a general circus thing? Is she slowly phasing it out and replacing it with a different gimmick? I know it’s probably very obvious, but I can’t my head around it.
On the one hand, Gog probably moves on with the times. Since they run the entertainment of Throne, they probably can’t stick with any one thing too long or the audience will tune out. So now that it’s been three years, people are done with clowns and Gog is offering up a different kind of performance.
On the other hand, this is probably a performance for Allison in particular, so it doesn’t have to be in line with Gog’s standard fare. Of course she’d very specifically tailor her art for those fortunate enough to receive private showings, Gog wants to impress.
I think Gog actually fairly consistently has a sort of early 1800s Europe Glam aesthetic by default, with a bit of a focus on harlequins, jesters, and masquerades, but also plenty of just-plain-classy dancers, dandies, and nobles. More specifically, I think the harlequin form you’re thinking of is more of a “work” form, while “classy blonde” is what wears she’s feeling especially fancy and doesn’t anticipate too much violence.
She wasn’t even very clownish at all in her first appearance at the council of Demiurges, remember! But then Mottom blew up that face (which she was working really hard on!), so the next time she met her fellow demiurges, and in nearly all subsequent appearances, she wore more sloppy, casual, forms that weren’t as precious to her.
This, on the other hand, is the Leviathan Revue – HER place of power. Nobody else’s. And so, she gets to dress up nice. And, um, also wreck one of her super-fancy bodies just to make a point, but that’s neither here nor there.
Well, thank both of you for the answers: there both very interesting takes!
Observation: did the body gog just broke originally belong to that gal we saw back in book 4 when she was explaining the worm thing to Allison? The one smiling crazy-like at the camera? I might be remembering it wrong, but she certainly looks like her from what I remember.
Maybe. That girl lacked the gap between the front teeth that this one has. But Gog can reshape bodies pretty easily.
On some level, the hosts are all the same entity, though.
Given that we just saw her reshape a body into a duplicate of another body, I don’t think there’s any particular reason to assume that two bodies looking the same says anything about whether they’re the same body.
This reminds me of a musical I went to once. The show started, somebody slid down a pipe, took a tumble and broke their arm. The show did not go on that time.
Never change, Gog.
If you want a horrible thought… maybe she never *will* change, maybe she *can’t* change, maybe none of the Demiurges can.
Maybe the best Gog can ever do is a new face and a new joke (though this punchline seems pretty old, tbh).