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Varinn posted:see I totally disagree here, I think jagganoth and solomon are almost exactly the same in this regard, and last chapters slow teardown of solomon almost certainly mostly applies to jagg as well. Totally fair; that's absolutely a valid way to read it. Just to explicate more what I see, in my interpretation Solomon David's big amplified negative personality trait is ego. He has an immovable sense of self that makes his blows unstoppable; all of the Celestial Empire is a juche state extension of him built on that foundation. By contrast, based on what we know about Jagg so far, he has *no* ego—it was stripped from him as he was forged into a living weapon and then passed from master to master until he became metatron's and got a glimpse at the true shape of the universe (in a different sense than Jadis though). In this context, I definitely don't interpret his search for a successor as entirely serious, in the sense that while it's what he says he wants holding such an impossibly high standard is a transparent way of indefinitely postponing the need to ever face the hard reality of giving up authority. My read is that he has more anxiety than he'd let on about being able to achieve Zoss-level royalty and has settled very comfortably into the immortal god-king role while telling himself that it's just for the moment. The other big point is the difference in purview each sees themselves as having. Solomon isn't trying to solve the problem at its root; change things for everyone. He's creating, as you said, a bubble of rules and order in a sea of chaos. Even if we imagine the Celestial Empire as a legit utopia, Solomon is the most ardent believer in the Pact that dooms 6/7ths of creation to not see any benefit from it, eternally, while Jagg rejects the pact as corrupt and pursues a universal, total upheaval. They are both definitely reactions to the cycles of violence of the old demiurges, but Solomon David wants to be a 'good' Yemmod while Jagganoth wants to remove the possibility of another Jantris (did anyone else catch that Mottom and Mammon just got explicitly identified with him in the alt text, btw?) I guess it would come down to how much you believe him that his velvet-fisted rule actually is a complete necessity or not. My baseline assumption is that he could, in fact, retire at any time if he really wanted to—that his empire would not instantly collapse into anarchy, but it might become a less perfect reflection of his ideas and ideals, and he's not really prepared to face that. relevant page tax:  source HookedOnChthonics fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Feb 14, 2021 |
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Feb 14, 2021 23:41
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Jantris wasn't the first storm-browed king mentioned in the text; that's a general term for the demiurges, if that's what you're referring to. And if anyone is Jantris come again, it's Jagganoth, who repeats nearly the same words as Jantris in speeches (below-comic text about one's death and where it lives) and who bears his key. Jagganoth almost certainly slew him, but Jagganoth is Jantris in every way that matters except that he thinks he's turning people into dead men for the good of all, instead of for his own gain. And Jantris never went half so far nor killed half so many as the Red God, one would suspect.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:59
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Rogue AI Goddess posted:Lord Intra did not gather a vast army to defeat the wicked Yem Yeddo, nor did he build an empire in the valley once it was liberated. Did anyone else feel a bit let down by that story? It came while Allison was learning that she couldn't solve every problem herself with violence, and while we were seeing the limitations of Solomon David who thinks he can do exactly that. Intra, god of swords, shows up in a village oppressed by a robber baron. Instead of looking badass he looks pathetically weak; instead of drawing his sword and fighting them he starts building a bread oven or something. The robber baron notes that this will not work as he has all the grain, then sends his men to kill Intra. At which point he just loving one shots them all. Not really sure what the moral was. It looked like Intra was going to inspire the people or something, but instead it was very straightforwardly his capacity for violence that saved the day. I mean I'm sure the people in the village knew how to make bread? The problem was the bad guy, and Intra solved the problem by being great at killing people. It felt like it was going to be a different story to that.
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Feb 16, 2021 01:20
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Magnus Manfist posted:Did anyone else feel a bit let down by that story? The moral was that Intra did not default to violence as the solution; it was when the bad guy resorted to violence that Intra responded in kind. It was also important that Intra did not set himself up as anything other than someone who did violence at the end; he wasn't a leader, he wasn't a savior, he just kills people, and it was up to the people themselves to take care of things after. This is in deliberate contrast to Solomon. Solomon killed the oppressors and protected the people, but then saw himself as the only person capable of governing when all he proved was his capacity to do violence.
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Feb 16, 2021 01:36
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In the immortal words of Agent J: don't start nothing, won't be nothing
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Feb 16, 2021 01:43
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I agree that the Lord Intra story was kind of a letdown. It was a lot less interesting or poignant than the GOAT, the Very Wise Frog, and it wasn't as funny as Aesma and the Red-Eyed King.
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Feb 16, 2021 04:45
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Joe Slowboat posted:I agree that the Lord Intra story was kind of a letdown. It was a lot less interesting or poignant than the GOAT, the Very Wise Frog, FOAT
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Feb 16, 2021 06:22
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skaianDestiny posted:The moral was that Intra did not default to violence as the solution; it was when the bad guy resorted to violence that Intra responded in kind. It was also important that Intra did not set himself up as anything other than someone who did violence at the end; he wasn't a leader, he wasn't a savior, he just kills people, and it was up to the people themselves to take care of things after. Yem Yeddo was not Yenmod, storm-crowned, who required a superhuman like Solomon to finally defeat. Yem Yeddo was just some grain-extracting chieftain, and a new one at that A charitable read of the Intra parable, well... he has given them a well and a bakery, a single point of community defence. There is some argument to the effect that highland rice terracing in Indochina played a similar role in providing highlanders with an extremely labour-intensive and costly, and yet shared, point of resistance against lowlander raids (the parable emphasizes at length the mythic effort that Intra puts into its construction). This is effective when the lowlander states are strong, but not too strong, and attacks can be plausibly resisted by a hilltop village, who should form a new imagined community ('brothers') and essentially permanently militarize themselves (hence the the stones). The rallying cry is to... form a new statelet in the wake of the devastating collapse of the old order: the rise of petty warlords due to the absence of any higher enforcing power amidst the universal war. Okay, fine, whatever, but maybe a little discordant amidst so many anarchist morals. ronya fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 07:08
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ah, ronya, good to see you ronyaing
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Feb 16, 2021 10:48
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HookedOnChthonics posted:...agg is purposeful rather than capricious, mission-focused rather than self-absorbed, dissatisfied with the shittiness of the world rather than perpetuating it I was with you until that last part. Jaggs universes are 111,111 worlds of 40k levels of human suffering to fuel the eternal war machine out to erase existence. Violence is king and the industry is death.
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Feb 16, 2021 13:44
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M_Gargantua posted:I was with you until that last part. Jaggs universes are 111,111 worlds of 40k levels of human suffering to fuel the eternal war machine out to erase existence. Violence is king and the industry is death. like 9/10 of the people ITT are posting from America, dude, it's not that big a deal
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Feb 16, 2021 15:57
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V. Illych L. posted:ah, ronya, good to see you ronyaing specifically James C. Scott cites Edmund Leach in passing to this effect in his subtitled 'Anarchist history of Upland Southeast Asia', although his interest (appropriately) moves on to the dispersed people who don't live in states, rather than the sedentary people who form little states capable of deterring big states the map onto the recurring anarchist theme makes sense, I guess. Two cheers for... uh, municipalism, I guess? ronya fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 17:07
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https://twitter.com/Orbitaldropkick/status/1361871944623280129
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Feb 17, 2021 04:07
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Oh hey The Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, that's cool.
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Feb 17, 2021 04:20
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Feb 17, 2021 04:22
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Dave looks grumpier than I've ever seen anyone look before
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Feb 17, 2021 04:36
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Please edit chain into beard, thank you.
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Feb 17, 2021 05:19
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Hmm those flowers on Mammon's head wilted pretty fast, these demiurges need to take better care of their plants. Or maybe that is his dorsum or his booty, his head would probably be too small of a stage given Mottom could straddle his entire head in her old lady form. So I choose to believe she is jazzing out and doing her cool ultimate moves on Mammon's butt.
MinutePirateBug fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 05:58
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I like that Dave has created a dome made entirely of punch
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Feb 17, 2021 07:26
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MinutePirateBug posted:Hmm those flowers on Mammon's head wilted pretty fast, these demiurges need to take better care of their plants. Or maybe that is his dorsum or his booty, his head would probably be too small of a stage given Mottom could straddle his entire head in her old lady form. So I choose to believe she is jazzing out and doing her cool ultimate moves on Mammon's butt. It's his neck, with his head dipped down just out of panel. Mammon has a lot of neck.
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Feb 17, 2021 10:15
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Since you can't see her face I'm choosing to believe the Zs are actually because middle Mottom fell asleep mid attack.
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Feb 17, 2021 12:48
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This just whips so much rear end.
habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 13:11
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It chains so much rear end
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Feb 17, 2021 14:48
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ronya posted:specifically James C. Scott cites Edmund Leach in passing to this effect in his subtitled 'Anarchist history of Upland Southeast Asia', although his interest (appropriately) moves on to the dispersed people who don't live in states, rather than the sedentary people who form little states capable of deterring big states The Art of Not Being Governed looked so good I had to order it right away. Care to expound while I wait for it to ship?
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Feb 17, 2021 15:01
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Dave looks grumpier than I've ever seen anyone look before Consider how long it took that kusarigama to arrive from his perspective.
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Feb 17, 2021 15:45
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Salami Dave gHost Rides the Whip
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Feb 17, 2021 16:02
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Yadoppsi posted:The Art of Not Being Governed looked so good I had to order it right away. Care to expound while I wait for it to ship? also read Seeing like a State and Weapons of the Weak - it's too easy to romanticize noble highlanders and TAONBG maybe leans into it too much, giving 'Zomia' an almost unreal air. Seeing like a State is about recognizable modernity (a long discussion by Lou Keep here, with links to related discussions). Weapons of the Weak is even more concretely grounded in recognizably modern parties and institutions, which gives it a tighter relationship to the lived experience of the powerless living on the periphery of a contemporary capitalism we can recognize, rather than a preindustrial extractive grain despotism we probably can't (specifically, in the struggle between the United Malays National Organisation and the Parti Islam Se-Malaysia in a rural part of Malaysia; it also helps that a Western perspective is not instinctively inclined to regard the politics of either as sympathetic). ronya fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 02:01
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Joe Slowboat posted:I agree that the Lord Intra story was kind of a letdown. It was a lot less interesting or poignant than the GOAT, the Very Wise Frog, and it wasn't as funny as Aesma and the Red-Eyed King. Yeah, I still think the priests deciding to "help" Aesma get married so she'd become a dutiful meek wife and the story noting "this was a FANTASTICALLY bad idea" is one of my favorite funny lines ever in anything I've read  .
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Feb 18, 2021 04:38
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EDIT: Double posting not as funny.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:38
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Still waiting for Aesma Gets a Dog, I guess I can wade through the filler until then.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:00
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MadDogMike posted:Yeah, I still think the priests deciding to "help" Aesma get married so she'd become a dutiful meek wife and the story noting "this was a FANTASTICALLY bad idea" is one of my favorite funny lines ever in anything I've read went back and reread this and lol it really is good quote:A great discordant cry went up then among the priests, and they threw themselves into furious debate. Some of them wanted Aesma out by the stave immediately, no matter the truth of her words. Others could not believe that such a wicked being could find love. But the sentiment that won out in the end was the rather self indulgent and completely wrong notion that if Aesma had indeed found a husband, she would be far better served by having a man to reign in her wanton and vile habits. The priests were very firm in their belief that the moral authority of a good husband could tease out an enlightened womanly virtue from even the most wretched of creatures, and therefore they ceased to see Aesma as a base and vile creature beyond redemption, and began to see her as a great conquest and affirmation of their own righteousness. They began to imagine in their enlightened minds the power and prestige of a tame and demure Aesma, the most infamous and despised of goddesses. This was a fantastic mistake.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:17
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https://twitter.com/Orbitaldropkick/status/1362917676008505348?s=19 Bagged and tagged! Job well done folks. Happy hour, anyone?
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Feb 20, 2021 01:15
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Phew. Glad that's over with. Now we can get into the far more important matter of White Chain's future fashion choices. Maybe something in saffron?
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Feb 20, 2021 01:22
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Is that Jags breathing in, or out? Did he pick up some Ki Rata somewhere? Is Salami Dave about to get some of his own medicine?
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Feb 20, 2021 01:24
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The broke jaggs helmet, victory is theirs. Btw now would be a really good time for our plucky heroes to skedaddle
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Feb 20, 2021 01:27
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hmm he appears to have set himself on fire. a huge win for our heroes!
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Feb 20, 2021 01:28
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ladies and gentlemen, we got him
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Feb 20, 2021 01:38
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Somebody pour some Gatorade on Solomon, we got 'im!
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Feb 20, 2021 01:40
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Gog's gonna run out and hit Solomon with a steel chair.
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Feb 20, 2021 01:46
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THE JAGGAHOG IS LOOSE
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Feb 20, 2021 01:52
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