Wielder of Names 1-3
Chapter: 1
“Be wary of the stone men. Though we have shaped their shells in exchange for their service, their hearts are of cold fire and law, and their bodies are hammers for shattering the weak.”
– Pericloss, Master Craftsman of the Circle
Please tell me Michael’s sword is one that is either made of fire or can light on fire.
I somewhat enjoy White Chain defying his master.
And though I missed my chance earlier, hopefully I can remedy that by offering my most heartfelt thanks to thee, Abbadon. Thy tale-recounting skills are exceptional.
As an aside, do we know for sure that White Chain identifies as male or prefers male pronouns? Refusing to be identified as female doesn’t necessarily equate to identifying as male, especially for angels. And as far as I can recall, everyone in-setting has used female pronouns for 82 (including Cio, who is the closest thing to their friend that we’ve seen, and 23, another angel.) 23 calls 82 “sisterbrother”, too, which implies that ‘he’ is no more correct than ‘she’.
It’s possible that 82 doesn’t identify as female or male, but still uses female pronouns. Mostly, it always feels odd to me that fans use male pronouns when, to my recollection, nobody who knows 82 in-setting does (and as I recall 82 has never said anything about the pronouns specifically, only objecting to being explicitly gendered as female.) I suppose it’s possible that both Cio and 23 were deliberately antagonizing 82, but it’s hard to say for sure.
Thou art correct. I seem to have – possibly falsely – remembered someone addressing them with ‘he’ and it must have stuck with me. I don’t believe we’ve seen White Chain address their gender in explicit terms, so ‘they’ is in this case much more appropriate.
I’m not certain we can say how this world views gender, so it is quite probable ‘he’ and ‘she’ are not even considered gendered, which could explain the usage of ‘she’ when referring to White Chain by both Ciocie and Liminal Blossom. Though, as thou mentionst, both of them could very well be simply attempting to insult them.
I thank thee.
It is important that one never forgets that Aeons are sapient masses of constantly exploding star-hot plasma, compressed and restricted into a shell of divinely forged war-armor. Applying gender pronouns to them is utterly pointless, as they are neither capable of nor have any desire towards procreation.
And yes, it is nearly certain that Ciocie and 23 were deliberately antagonizing 82.
Interesting in this context that the first word block on the next page begins with a reference to “brothers”.
Almost every language refers to humans, when uncertain, using male terminology, for the simple reason that women one would meet who wouldn’t be known to one, back when languages were evolving, were rare in the extreme, especially if not Immediately identifiable by occupation, and the “range” of human males is naturally as large compared to females as that of tomcats to cats proper.
Females, being biologically far more valuable than us chaps, simply didn’t roam as far as lads did. The “modern” but still minority American English trend of abandoning agreement of tenses (causing much confusion and more bad writing) to de-gender humans as we’ve functionally de-gendered cats and most other animals (not including cows and geese) just strikes most of us who grew up with other languages as … deliberately illiterate. In the context of something esoteric like this comic, however, where duality and sex matter a lot, it is less irritating than normal, though it still would deprive us of distinctions that are Legion … er … legion … as much as it might also matter in terms of giving insight into personality and/or function.
I know I’m 5 years late, but I wanted to say that I too used to be irked by this perceived lack of grammatical propriety… until it was pointed out to me that we’ve been using “they” as a singular pronoun for hundreds of years. It wasn’t common, sure, but even Shakespeare did it.
And if reading Shakespeare teaches us anything in schools, it’s that language evolves. Complaining about the rise of “they” requires wearing both linguistic and temporal blinders.
Worse- she* is CORRECTING her master.
(for sufficiently broad terms of “she”)
In addition to that, I’m entirely sure 2 Micheal is old enough to be excused for using archaic meanings of words, like “man” as a gender-neutral term. Though that presumes they’re taking in English at all, and I’m pretty sure they aren’t. I wonder what a more literal translation of what they’re saying would reveal, in terms of etymology.
This has everything I want and love. That’s the only things I can say. I love this page.
I’m liking 82’s apprentice outfit, assuming the change of outfit is helping to signify that we are in the past.
Perhaps not- see White Chain’s left eye. It seems to display the damage we saw it sustain.
Why did you resist that urge?
There’s still time to go back, do it
Yessssssss…
I suspect the elder angel’s full name is actually 2 Michael Aged Beyond Fecal Tolerance.
If the second book is called Wielder of Names, does the first have a title as well?
Vylus, I asked this same question earlier. The first book is titled Kill Six Billion Demons, same as the story as a whole.
All the realms of light are realms of men, while we other-side creatures are relegated to darkness.
I wonder what happened to Michael 1, given the spears embedded in Michael 2’s back.
I think that this page gives us context regarding what the numbers mean. The numbers seem to represent their generation. So there would likely be some amount of angels whose names start with 2, who would likely include all of our favorite arch-angels. I wonder how many angels are in 82’s generation?
2 Michael looks to have taken considerable punishment, what with the spears and missing fingers. Does he keep these wounds as keepsakes? Surely Angels, what with their tendency towards violent duties, must have some means of repairing themselves.
Though an Angel itself is a being of flame and impetus, its body is naught but stone in a useful state. Like any stone, it is worn down by the passage of time, and by the flows around it.
To repair their damaged shells would be to deny them understanding of that Great Truth:
Try To Avoid Getting Stabbed.
Yes the flame is corrupt 1 Micheal and as the prime angel the source is you and it’s name is Pride. It is within your means and power to have your shell repaired yet you keep the damage as a mark of your ability to survive.
Maybe its just more harmful to Michael if (s?)he takes the spears out, like how youre not supposed to take out arrows for fear of bleeding out.
That look he gives, “forgive me for this violence I am about to…”, and I could swear I saw the name Metia before or was I imagining that?
Meti’s Sword Manual. I suppose you could find some meaning in such a character’s name being derived from Metia.
It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though. If they believe the first human was named Metia, I imagine that it (and names derived from it) would be very common in the setting.
2 Micheal: “You startin’, student? Don’t make me crack out the beaten’ tree.”
82: “I’ll be good!”
2 Micheal: “Damn straight.”
Ah yes, this will serve as an excellent visual representation for my records. Much obliged for your most convenient diagrams. Or has this not happened yet. From way out here it gets so hard to keep track.
I think it is 1 Morning Star.
That.. seems like a good guess actually.
Also, for fun read Michael’s lines in Samuel L. Jackson’s voice.
“White Chain, hand me my wallet.”
PLEASE LET US BUY THIS COMIC
That’s the plan!
do you have book of any of this. i want to give you money to own this in paper form, looked but didnt find one…..
You will 100% be able to later this year. I’ll post lots of details when I know more.
Abbadon, do you take submissions? I want to pay you a lot of tasty dollars for a picture of great Solomon David.
To be fair, pretty sure he’s talking about the race of men, in which case interrupting to specify female is rude and pointless.
I really loved reading your blog. It was very well authored and easy to undertand. Unlike additional blogs I have read which are really not tht good. I also found your posts very interesting. In fact after reading, I had to go show it to my friend and he ejoyed it as well!
That is the excellent mindset, nonetheless is just not help to make every sense whatsoever preaching about that Mather. Virtually any method many thanks in addition to i had endeavor to promote your own article in to delicious nevertheless it is apparently a dilemma using your information sites can you please recheck the idea. thanks once more.
You’ve got some interesting points in this article. I would have never considered any of these if I didn’t come across this. Thanks!.
Thanks for sharing nice information with us. i like your post and all you share with us is up-to-date and quite informative, i would like to bookmark the page so i can come here again to read you, as you have done a wonderful job.
Lucifer. Where’s Lucifer? Satan? The Beast?
Always gotta look out for them when demons are in a story.
This is an excellent article! I’d like for everyone to know how useful the information in your post is. On this subject, your viewpoints are identical to mine. Because I know, I will check your blog every day. It has the potential to be really beneficial to me.
This was an nice article. Thanks for sharing this author. Wielder of Names is the best one.
I’m just looking at this stuff all night . Great work and thanks for this.