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Dave is Operant saying "even this dude who obviously cares and is rad as hell is a tyrant who cannot protect his people"
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Nov 5, 2021 02:17
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Captain Oblivious posted:we keep having to disable comments because there's too many Dave supporters. we're not doing anything like that at all
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Nov 5, 2021 02:17
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Captain Oblivious posted:
Your critical engagement in this case is bad and you should feel bad There, that's my critical engagement Anyway, you're in luck, because this scene looks like it's about to conclude. Imagine how awesome this sequence will look in print.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:19
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I survived hitball, I can endure however long this needs to be.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:26
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I mean sure it could easily get lost in there that Solomon is bad, but really I think you can pretty much ask for sick nasty drawings or get insightful commentary, and while it would be nice to have both one notices that even someone who can do both won't do them simultaneously all the time. This is probably a big setpiece from long ago. Actually now that I think about it the idea was once floated that Zoss could beat Jagganoth by simply hucking him off the wheel, and if Dave was actually playing the suicide attack thing he would do that, basically throwing him out of the universes they can travel through so he is stuck there falling forever. He'd be subject to the same fate, but it wouldn't matter if he was invincible. Anyway Billionaires have power due to the money and connections they have, and without those are trash who gets put aside at best, so really while comparisons to real life can be drawn Dave has fundamental differences in his material circumstances and those whom he wrongs/has wronged that make him a poor stand in for the issues we face today since if you took everything and everyone he has he is still a super kung-fu wizard who could take it all back in a comparative heartbeat against a united front of mortals.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:29
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Captain Oblivious posted:Nah. It's important to engage critically with the media you consume. Even, and especially, the media you like. This, this right here. Chef's loving kiss.
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Nov 5, 2021 02:33
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Operant should give Dave a knarly rear end pimple like right on his nose that just kind of randomly explodes in puss and reforms itself so people know he isn't cool its made of worms
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Nov 5, 2021 03:17
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I think that it's worth working through what the work itself specifically criticizes Dave for, and what the work itself specifically sets forth as the way to 'cut God.' Dave is criticized, by White Chain explicitly, for stagnation. For being so afraid of change that he's slaughtered the young and idealistic over and over for centuries to keep them from upsetting everything. Dave's unwillingness to die and let the next generation take over, because they might do a worse job than him, is his central flaw as a character (the same way Incubus' absolute inability to take the L is his, and Mottom's terror of death leading her to reproducing her own suffering a millionfold, or ultimately Jagganoth's unwillingness to accept that the world could be improved somewhat rather than burnt to ash). The demiurges are fundamentally being critiqued for their stagnation, and David's legalist empire is definitionally stagnant. Him getting chewed out by a people he has utterly failed is a pretty big deal! It's really not 'Dave is good at violence' that is getting people to side with him about putting a woman in jail for 25 years for getting drunk one time. Anyways, a repeated concept in the story is the idea that the swordsman who forgets any chance of his own survival and acts purely out of his intention 'can cut God.' That's what Dave's doing now - his only priority is the act, not his victory, not his empire. Is that morally good? I mean, not really. Certainly not redemptive. But it's in line with the themes of the story. The real question will be, what kind of world has he left his people once he did the first actually useful thing he's done in 10,000 years? Potentially, a world minus two tyrants, but plus a massive, collapsing empire. I don't expect this to kill Jagganoth anyways, but it might slow him down enough to make space for the next part of the narrative. E: basically, this story has never actually been about critiquing the demiurges on political ethics grounds, but on their stagnation; Jagganoth is the least pathetic demiurge, and he's openly genocidal, but he's less stagnant than the rest. None of them are even marginally good people, but they stand in for an entire era of history, so them achieving personal change before being turned into red mist is responding to that thematic core. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 04:28
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Hail Mary guess but maybe Davey is gonna try and get Himself involved? Curious as to what his plan is at Throne. e: also I agree with the above post. Anyone who thinks Dave is an actual good dude and ruler are the same people who have star wars empire stickers on their cars.
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Nov 5, 2021 04:54
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Captain Oblivious posted:Not at all. Depending on how this scene ends, I'm leaning towards "Operant has made serious missteps as a story teller". Particularly, I'm beginning to feel that even if Solomon David's last stand here is a net good, even if this is meant to be part of the throughline of "your struggle should be a terrible fire that spreads to others etc etc", there has been so much goddamn time framing the camera squarely on Solomon David and his struggles and his angst and his grief and how goddamn cool he is that I feel that Operant, as a storyteller, has a certain level of culpability for just how often people hoodwink themselves into supporting Dave. Are the plebs just too dumb to get the story and its themes, or has the storyteller muddled their own point too much with poor framing? we had a chapter partly revolving around Mottom and what her deal is, a chapter partly revolving around Mammon and what his deal is, now we're having a chapter that partly revolves around Solomon and what his deal is; it's a pretty conventional framing and the smaller part of what's going on in the story. There's scarce been a depiction of a tyrant yet fascists haven't liked; and they're not "hoodwinking" themselves, all the guys cheering for him locking up that lady for 25 years on a drunkenness charge just love power and cruelty. It's a pretty absurd proposition that there's some kind of primary artistic imperative to make chuds sad, maybe people who aren't those guys deserve to have stories written for them. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 05:08
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CodfishCartographer posted:I was going to say "it's only been 4 updated about Dave, at most it'll probably just be 5-6 then we'll be moving on" but I guess compared to Mammon's two updates and Mottom's whopping one update, it is a bit more stretched out. I guess that being said the story up until Jagg dropped in was very focused on Dave so this is likely trying to pull double duty of resolving both the Dave and Jagg stories together at once. Yeah, it's this. Solomon David's last stand needs more panel time than the other demiurges, because he's been built up as the foil of a main character. What's happening here isn't about David, or at least not only about him: it's important for White Chain's story too, by contrast. David is doing this because the only way he can stop living a life of stagnation is by throwing that life away entirely; White Chain will exceed him by actually living a different kind of life than she had been.
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Nov 5, 2021 05:13
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im just over here waiting for skinless meat-creature incubus to turn to allison like "so.... that was hosed up huh?"
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Nov 5, 2021 05:15
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While I do agree the comic could be more critical of Dave, it is worth noting that there will almost always be a vocal subset of people who support and love a fascist in any piece of media, it seems. Look at Armstrong from MGR, he's pretty much a mustache twirling villain but tons of people go "why is he the bad guy???" because he spouted fascist libertarian rhetoric.
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Nov 5, 2021 05:19
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Captain Oblivious posted:It's not just about these four pages. It's about the entire last chapter as well. We have spent an awful lot of time having sympathy for the devil and really zooming in on how goddamn cool he is. your opinion loving sucks dude
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Nov 5, 2021 05:22
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imo it's the fault of authors that that guy quoting the "A Few Good Men" speech unironically as some righteous badass poo poo isn't a nice liberal
A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 05:25
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dave was confronted with the error of his ways and seems to have responded decisively by basically employing what he learned from white chain's, uh, transition. it's redemptive and heroic. he even left behind big sparkling clouds that look kind of like white chain's angelic body.
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Nov 5, 2021 05:29
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I am very excited to see what happens next. I don't think it will be good for Dave! But no matter what happens I know it will be cool.
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Nov 5, 2021 05:46
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:dave was confronted with the error of his ways and seems to have responded decisively by basically employing what he learned from white chain's, uh, transition. it's redemptive and heroic. he even left behind big sparkling clouds that look kind of like white chain's angelic body. i love solomon david because for all his preening smug bullshit, if you hit him hard enough to destroy all the justifications and rationalizations hes spent so long building up around himself to reinforce why Hes the Only Worthy Dude and everyone else needs to Stay in Line, Or Face the Consequences, hes still deep down the mortal soldier that lost everything up to and including the sun in the sky paranoid randroid fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 06:02
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It seems inferred that Throne is full of would-be Demiurges just as powerful as those who claimed Keys, only most of them are the ones happy to be noodle vendors and never touch a sword or raise a fist. I presume Solomon's plan is to shove Jagganoth at them and kick open an ant's nest of Violence.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:08
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Saying that the comic doesn’t engage with critique of the demiurges in political or moral grounds is wild after white chain did literally that while looking straight at the fourth wall, and Zoss followed up with another critique of power within the work like 3 pages later.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:13
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to clarify, my take on dave is illustrative of why you should learn to do literally everything else before learning to swing a sword by meti's reckoning - you need to have something worth learning sword arts in defense of. if someone comes to destroy it, chop their loving head off. but always remember that the sword is a hideous implement for morons and you should regard using it with as much gravity as taking a poo poo on the beach the old practitioners of ki-rata forgot the first point by refusing to defend rayuba, and dave forgot the second by using ki-rata for spectacle to prop himself up e. to clarify further, the angry old drunk living in a barrel during a period of inter-galactic warfare is probably not the best role model and i would not recommend living by her teachings paranoid randroid fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 06:15
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paranoid randroid posted:e. to clarify further, the angry old drunk living in a barrel during a period of inter-galactic warfare is probably not the best role model and i would not recommend living by her teachings The old drunk in the barrel would also have agreed with you most wholeheartedly, but if you are stupid enough to listen to her teachings, then she was going to make sure you learned what she had to teach.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:27
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The old drunk in the barrel would also have agreed with you most wholeheartedly, but if you are stupid enough to listen to her teachings, then she was going to make sure you learned what she had to teach. hey man if youre going to be a moron with an ugly piece of metal you might as well know how to use the drat thing
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Nov 5, 2021 06:28
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akulanization posted:Saying that the comic doesn’t engage with critique of the demiurges in political or moral grounds is wild after white chain did literally that while looking straight at the fourth wall, and Zoss followed up with another critique of power within the work like 3 pages later.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:43
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paranoid randroid posted:im just over here waiting for skinless meat-creature incubus to turn to allison like "welp"
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Nov 5, 2021 06:50
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akulanization posted:Saying that the comic doesn’t engage with critique of the demiurges in political or moral grounds is wild after white chain did literally that while looking straight at the fourth wall, and Zoss followed up with another critique of power within the work like 3 pages later. Those are both framed as moral analyses of the character of the people doing it, not critiques of their societies; it's not political ethics, which is the thing I said it wasn't. The comic is not actually about political economy, at all, and it doesn't need to be. It's not about how to operate a correct government, it's about broad concepts of stagnation, personal and societal but primarily personal. Zoss' critique is aimed at the character of Incubus, and his insistence on personal power and total lack of trust - Incubus sees the world as a deeply unjust place and his response is to be the most lethal bastard he can be and look out for himself.. "He who masters the wheel cannot break it" isn't political ethics, it's personal and moral. Approaching it as a how-to for communism is gonna just lead to disappointment, when the actual thing that the comic is is both really cool and probably compatible with many left tendencies. E: to be clear, I'm arguing that wanting the work to explicitly look you in the eyes and say 'Solomon David was a bad tyrant and his dying in a cool way doesn't make his empire good, actually' is asking it to be something it's not and also... really unnecessary. The explicit themes invoked in those direct-to-camera statements are more in line with the comic as a whole than that.
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Nov 5, 2021 06:50
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Nov 5, 2021 07:15
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im reminded of the Chapo Trap House review of the movie Gotti where they rounded out saying it was a movie "for the kind of guy that watches the Sopranos and concludes that being in the mob rules because you get to hang out in the back room of a strip club in a strip mall with your idiot friends all the time" paranoid randroid fucked around with this message at 07:26 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 07:21
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Dave has never once been portrayed as "cool". Full of himself and with enough pomp and power to (mostly) back it up, yes. But he's always been an egotistical, ultimately self-centered and broken manchild and the comic has never failed to show that in great, full detail. But he Punch Real Good so I guess that means he's cool.
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Nov 5, 2021 07:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:Those are both framed as moral analyses of the character of the people doing it, not critiques of their societies; it's not political ethics, which is the thing I said it wasn't. “He who masters the wheel cannot break it” is an in universe way of saying that the master’s tools cannot destroy the master’s house. It’s a statement of praxis, as is Zoss’s exhortation to embrace strength beyond strength. I guess he could have quoted Lorde directly? Zoss is explicitly opining on the failures of the society he built and is still seen as the paragon of. Zoss also doesn’t care about incubus or incubus’s philosophy. You keep trying to draw a very sharp line between the personal and the systemic that I categorically reject. Especially since, as you seem to note in your edit, the political, personal, and philosophical are inevitably and appropriately commingled in any work of fiction. Drawing the line of the political sphere such that anything short of a treatise on revolutionary tactics will fail to meet it is flatly unhelpful for any close reading of the work.
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Nov 5, 2021 07:28
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Bussamove posted:Full of himself and with enough pomp and power to (mostly) back it up... egotistical, ultimately self-centered This is the definition of cool for a lot of people.
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Nov 5, 2021 08:04
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:dave was confronted with the error of his ways and seems to have responded decisively by basically employing what he learned from white chain's, uh, transition. it's redemptive and heroic. he even left behind big sparkling clouds that look kind of like white chain's angelic body. What is the thing that White chain's transition is supposed to have actually changed here? Dave is still doing the exact same thing he's always done: Be the god protecting his people, except this time the threat is so big that doing so is gonna kill him. White Chains lesson was that the world he built and upheld by himself cannot last and to leave his people to forge their own destiny. So maybe now he's saving them because he's feeling bad about the millenia of tyranny or maybe he still has the same delusions of control as previously, but right now in these specific panels it's not making any functional difference (it could have, but imho this is just more of the same, only more desperate). Both his previous stance and the one WC was supposed to have taught him lead to his current reaction as one of their possible conclusions imo. Ocean of Milk fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 08:32
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akulanization posted:“He who masters the wheel cannot break it” is an in universe way of saying that the master’s tools cannot destroy the master’s house. It’s a statement of praxis, as is Zoss’s exhortation to embrace strength beyond strength. I guess he could have quoted Lorde directly? Zoss is explicitly opining on the failures of the society he built and is still seen as the paragon of. forbidding use of the master's tool kinda runs contrariwise to leftist praxis, as told by goodguy lenin: “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” moreover, i think you are looking for a structural analysis in a work that is extremely married to buddhist aesthetics. We've kind of had it hammered in that attachment is what fucks people over, the demiurges desperately clung to the present and created their own samsara. the master of the wheel can't break it because he is bound to it by his desires. you're not really going to get a call to political action in a pseudo-buddhist philosophy because it fundamentally devalues the material in favor of the immaterial
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Nov 5, 2021 08:33
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My position isn't that you can't find political takeaways in Kill Six Billion Demons, nor that the personal is irrelevant to the systemic. It's that the register of this comic is not the systemic, but the mythic and personal, because... that's the genre it's operating in. If we ever got a long aside about the actual operation of David's empire, or the relationship of the demiurges to the Means of Production, it would hugely undermine the actual thematic interests the work has already put out because that's not the kind of theorizing it's doing. Respect the actual register of a work and you can find much more interesting engagement. Incubus is literally the figure Zoss is responding to when he appears in Allison's head in King of Swords. Incubus also rules just as much of the universe as Dave. The idea that Incubus isn't just as relevant to Zoss' perspective as Dave is a result of privileging things that look like, at a passing glance systemic analysis more than things that are more obviously personal and mythic, but the comic is in the same register for Incubus, Jagganoth, and Solomon David. Recognizing how that register operates will make finding leftist analyses of the work much easier. Historical materialism means working with what we have, not what we want to have, on the level of the text as well as on the level of history. As a big flaming stink says, this comic is interested in a Buddhist idea of attachment (and a Nietzschean concept of valuation, I might add). These aren't inherently incompatible with a leftist analysis of whatever kind, but you need to meet the text where it actually is and develop from there. Also "Strength beyond strength" isn't praxis by any means; it's a mythic declaration that quite possibly refers to solidarity rather than singularity, and therefore to a left-aligned sentiment, but it's not praxis any more than any aphorism is praxis. E: On a very basic level, it is a meaningful statement with systemic implications to say 'we cannot have a single godlike hero-king to set everything right, they will become a tyrant' but that's not systemic analysis when it's primarily stated to someone in a position to maybe become that tyrant, and from the perspective of 'I have become that tyrant.' It's not a question of the shape of this particular system that creates tyranny, but the nature of heroism; it's in line with the meditations on violence and stagnation more than it is a discussion of the political economy of divine monarchy. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Nov 5, 2021 |
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Nov 5, 2021 09:00
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Bussamove posted:Dave has never once been portrayed as "cool". Full of himself and with enough pomp and power to (mostly) back it up, yes. But he's always been an egotistical, ultimately self-centered and broken manchild and the comic has never failed to show that in great, full detail. To be fair, that one time he murdered an entire squad of people while stopping time and then making sure that all the blood didn't get on the people that didn't challenge his authority was pretty loving cool no matter how horrific and gratuitous it was. But also I fully believe he was trying to waffle out of White Chain's request before Jadis warped in on him proving that even in the face of true change and the realization that the will of the people is stronger than him he was still resistant to change.
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Nov 5, 2021 09:03
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I think the moral of this comic is that if you can't kill what you don't like its because you don't yet have enough cubits in your spear. So get more cubits.
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Nov 5, 2021 09:20
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Bussamove posted:Dave has never once been portrayed as "cool". Full of himself and with enough pomp and power to (mostly) back it up, yes. But he's always been an egotistical, ultimately self-centered and broken manchild and the comic has never failed to show that in great, full detail. A big part of Dave is that he is putting up a constant spectacle around his persona. I think one can reasonably agree or disagree whether parts of him, his actions or his spectacle are or are not cool.
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Nov 5, 2021 09:44
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good posts
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Nov 5, 2021 09:54
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YaketySass posted:good posts This, but unambiguously unironically
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Nov 5, 2021 10:54
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the only part of this conversation i'd disagree with is that jagganoth is "less stagnant" than the other demiurges - he's just as spiritually and philosophically inert as the rest of them, it's just that his philosophy consists of unceasing annihilation so his decay is a lot more spectacular than most
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