My second-favourite webcomic of all time is Kill Six Billion Demons. Here's the pitch:
Allison Wanda Ruth is an anxious and unremarkable college student. She has a boyfriend, Zaid. Unbeknownst to either of them, Zaid is prophesised to be the rightful heir to the all-powerful god-king of the multiverse, Zoss. Unfortunately, Zoss is missing, presumed dead.
In the first pages of the comic, amidst an unprovoked whorl of senseless violence, the bloodstained, headless, long-dead corpse of Zoss appears and bestows the Key that contains all of his power... upon Allison, instead of Zaid.
Entirely unprepared, Allison must now wield this multiverse-shaping power in exactly the same way one might wield a particularly sharp rock - and conquer the seven False Demiurges that have divided up the multiverse to rule in the years since Zoss disappeared.
Come on, class! Today's field trip is to the Battlefield of the Gods!
Also only twelve or so demons have died so far, it's not actually about Killing Demons, that's just Allison's true name. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
If the premise of "average person must suddenly grapple with what it even means be a god, and also everyone is bisexual and ludicrously cool but tragically flawed" catches you?
That link will take you to the very first page of the comic. It's long, and still ongoing, but it is absolutely, verifiably, a better read than this article. Do yourself a favour and read it. I'm not even going to say "bookmark this article for when you're done," because, no, you'll read the comic and you'll get as Extremely Normal as I am about it and you'll probably make your own long metadiscussion post about it instead. It's that sort of comic.
If you are not going to read KSBD, then you can still read this article. It might not make a lot of sense to you, but it might persuade you to read the comic. Everything below this next header is Spoiler Territory.
With that established:
Plus, like, what even is a God, anyway?
Whatever. The important thing is that when you have the sort of power that would arguably make you God-like (KSBD calls this a 'Demiurge'), four things are true:
Being a Demiurge, or God, sucks. Hard. As an inevitable result of the unceasing struggle for power (caused by the total inability of the power-mad to do basic Game Theory), all Demiurges are, by nature, afraid.
Well. I should say: they're terrified, and their fear shapes them as people far more than any other traits they have - or once had.
That might be my closest read on the 'core' of the ideas KSBD is playing with. It's not "power corrupts". It's more like "power makes you afraid, and fear corrupts".
Each Demiurge has a particular, personal way their fear emerges:
These are all products of fear - specifically, fear of obliteration and impotence. Of death, in all its kinds.
Each of them is obsessed with seeking royalty through their own perspective, and are terrified that they're going to fail. Endlessly scared that they could one day be (or are already) helpless in the grasp of a greater power - be that a person or phenomena.
In addition to preventing any kind of meaningful trust or collaboration, this fear is itself the thing that renders each of them helpless.
I think the above contains the seeds of something very funny:
Despite their desperation to each achieve a unique and unconquerable power, the Seven Demiurges are all still predictable and derivative. None of them have learned from the past, from previous Demiurges, or from their own actions. None of them.
It is obvious that Solomon learned nothing from the failings of those he surpassed. The Monks of the Silent Voice, for one, but also Yulvur Ironblood - whose empire he toppled by simply killing him. The only option Solomon David saw was to be a stronger pillar. This was foolishness, and his worlds burned as a result.
A significant step on would-be-Demiurge Maya's journey to bearing a Key was killing a Demiurge who was desperately clinging onto life by isolating himself and making blood sacrifices of innocents.
She then failed to heed his failure and, without her teacher's mocking intervention, would have continued seeking power out of her own unexamined fear - becoming greedy and negligent like Mammon, or a desperate blood-sacrificer like Mottom.
The pattern repeats. Those who seek power are trapped by it, by their fear of losing it, by their fear of failing or being surpassed. They are trapped in the exact same ways as their predecessors. In this respect, Jadis is correct.
Having directly faced every other one of the seven Demiurges (and a lot more besides), she directly confronts the Mad Worm Jester, Gog-Agog.
In response to being (lightly) mocked about her hopes and intentions in this desperate eleventh hour, Allison sweeps aside Gog-Agog's needlings about the futility of it all, saying this:
Yeah, fair enough.
At first glance, this might seem like more of the same. Emotions running unchecked, leading to violence, right?
Perhaps not.
By now, in Book 5 of KSBD, Allison has been directly faced with all of the Demiurges' failings. She has seen that Mammon's safe retreat did not save him. That Mottom's ruthless sacrifice of others did not save her. That Incubus's machinations did not gain them anything. That Solomon's refusal to cede an ounce of his strength made him weak. And now, despite their overwhelming power and all-spanning perspectives over past cycles, she is coming to see that neither Gog nor Jag have any mastery of royalty.
Importantly, she saw that her mentor Maya, a once-demiurge-turned-drunkard, learned at least part of this lesson too.
On her path to her Key, Maya grew to fear the hold that others had over her. Yet, borne on a palanquin by obedient servants, her power over others unquestionable, her master Meti was still able to lay her bare with a single question: What next? What was the point of it all? To strive for power out of fear?
And so Maya abandoned her status and power, and fled, and thus lived to see at least half of a true life, full of trust and love. Now, after losing even that, Maya sees no path for herself - torn between knowing that power begets destruction, but also that a lack of it begets vulnerability to that destruction.
Unable to resolve these truths, knowing her master Meti was never able to truly resolve them either, she insists it is crucial that Allison must face the dilemma herself:
Welcome to Philosophy 101. Quickly, discover how to meaningfully enact nonviolence in a violent world! Oops, too slow.
Allison's answer is both endearing and relateable: "Uh... what? I can't answer that!"
Later on, Allison does give a more considered answer: "I can't answer [the question]... yet. All I can see is what's in front of me, and all I can do is keep moving forward."
In other words: It's a horribly complex question, and the answer of 'how to properly confront violent tyranny without perpetuating it' might only be discoverable in the act of trying - and no sooner.
When Allison says she's going to "beat the shit out of every bastard that ruined this world", she's not in an angry, violent rage. She's seen tyranny, and she's decided that action is better than inaction.
“A dog has more sense than you. He doesn’t think of death at all. Not when he sleeps, not when he bathes, and certainly not when he shits. You and he will both die."
Fear of death turns men into monsters. Maya, thus, also probes Allison about her thoughts on death (twice, actually, going back to their first in-passing encounter). And now, finally, Allison... shrugs.
Allison has been told to strive for her 'full potential' power for many different reasons - and been afraid to do so for just as many reasons. Afraid of her power, of her self, of her past, of her future, of the judgement of others, and of the possibility of failure.
The times when she has come closest to harnessing her power have not, predictably, been when she was afraid.
Mostly, they have been when she has acted to defend others or correct tyranny - and almost always when she was doing so without thought.
Notably, in her reflexive and thoughtless act of Destroying the Blood Tree, ending Mottom's endless parade of blood sacrifices used to preserve her youthful appearance, Allison is explicitly and textually acting as royalty - and thus her ability to tap into her power surges.
And now, having passed through the Demiurges' gauntlet of fears, now facing down Gog-Agog in these last few pages (Book 5, 3-76 to 3-78), Allison explicitly rejects not just the comforting defence of irony but the very fear of meaninglessness in the face of unfathomable vastness of any kind - multiple universes, meaningless suffering, powerful gods, time loops, even death itself.
There is no fear. Equally, there is nothing that justifies Allison's claim to power. There is no grand meaning or purpose. There is no undoing the horrors that have come to pass.
But she has a (maybe) sword, and an all-powerful, undefeatable Demiurge who has been killing rats and dreaming of grand purpose is about to kill again.
What else is there to do but, in foolish defiance, ready her blade and strike them dead without thought?
"She who strikes without thinking can cut God."
As of yet, we can only speculate on the decisions Allison will make after finally conquering all the tyrant Demiurges and freeing the multiverse from their petty, destructive yokes - or even what it would mean to meaningfully 'conquer' them in the first place.
How does one go about breaking the wheel of violence?
The problem is, simply, that it is trivial to learn to cut - even a fool can do it. One can never, ever, expect a world where would-be tyrants do not learn of its power. Thus, to exist without tyranny, every free person will forever require a defence.
This is why the Monks of the Silent Voice, keepers of Ki Rata and teachers of Solomon David, were always doomed to fail.
They sought to do the impossible - to be powerful enough to keep the 'most dangerous' powers to themselves, always remaining ready to strike against tyrants who independently discovered the power of Ki Rata - and intervening in none of the "lesser" struggles that ended their world.
Instead, they hoarded their power - and made themselves a single, prideful point of failure (a mistake their destroyer, Solomon David himself, would not learn from).
If you do not want those with power to wield it against the innocent, you must strike them first, before their harm is complete.
Thus, you must strike learn to cut faster than the tyrant, without thought. Without hesitation. The fool's thoughtless cut is the only path to existence without tyranny - and therefore, towards royalty.
In fact, it is possible to imagine that the only justifiable cut is one made reflexively in the face of injustice.
But such a cut is still a tragedy. Being justifiable does not make it any less tragic.
In fact, nobody actually proficient with the art of cutting in the universe of KSBD tends to say otherwise.
All true masters of the sword in its many forms (in varying degrees of severity and despair) have said that it is a barbaric, crude, and corrupting thing that has no beauty - only the deep ugliness of its simple, fundamental reality. A sword is an extension of the hand that cuts. There is no value in the act of cutting another.
I am eager to see what a Fully Ascended Demiurge Allison, with her ability to trust other people and her steadfast resolution that Something Must Be Done, No Matter What Doing It Costs Her, makes of this truth once her cutting motion is complete.
In fact, if royalty is a continuous cutting motion, but a proper cut requires self-annihilation... what does 'complete' even mean?
"Tragedy is just the name given to the span of time time that follows every victory."
Allison Wanda Ruth is an anxious and unremarkable college student. She has a boyfriend, Zaid. Unbeknownst to either of them, Zaid is prophesised to be the rightful heir to the all-powerful god-king of the multiverse, Zoss. Unfortunately, Zoss is missing, presumed dead.
In the first pages of the comic, amidst an unprovoked whorl of senseless violence, the bloodstained, headless, long-dead corpse of Zoss appears and bestows the Key that contains all of his power... upon Allison, instead of Zaid.
Entirely unprepared, Allison must now wield this multiverse-shaping power in exactly the same way one might wield a particularly sharp rock - and conquer the seven False Demiurges that have divided up the multiverse to rule in the years since Zoss disappeared.
Come on, class! Today's field trip is to the Battlefield of the Gods!
Also only twelve or so demons have died so far, it's not actually about Killing Demons, that's just Allison's true name. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
If the premise of "average person must suddenly grapple with what it even means be a god, and also everyone is bisexual and ludicrously cool but tragically flawed" catches you?
Go read Kill Six Billion Demons from the start. Please.
That link will take you to the very first page of the comic. It's long, and still ongoing, but it is absolutely, verifiably, a better read than this article. Do yourself a favour and read it. I'm not even going to say "bookmark this article for when you're done," because, no, you'll read the comic and you'll get as Extremely Normal as I am about it and you'll probably make your own long metadiscussion post about it instead. It's that sort of comic.
If you are not going to read KSBD, then you can still read this article. It might not make a lot of sense to you, but it might persuade you to read the comic. Everything below this next header is Spoiler Territory.
With that established:
Everyone is Afraid, Especially God(s)
Plus, like, what even is a God, anyway?
Whatever. The important thing is that when you have the sort of power that would arguably make you God-like (KSBD calls this a 'Demiurge'), four things are true:
- Everybody knows who you are, what your deal is, and what you want to keep safe.
- If someone kills you, they get to take your power for themselves.
- Lots of people are going to try this, and they will not care about collateral damage.
- You know this because, during your quest for power, you did not care about collateral damage.
Being a Demiurge, or God, sucks. Hard. As an inevitable result of the unceasing struggle for power (caused by the total inability of the power-mad to do basic Game Theory), all Demiurges are, by nature, afraid.
Well. I should say: they're terrified, and their fear shapes them as people far more than any other traits they have - or once had.
That might be my closest read on the 'core' of the ideas KSBD is playing with. It's not "power corrupts". It's more like "power makes you afraid, and fear corrupts".
Each Demiurge has a particular, personal way their fear emerges:
- Mammon's seclusion
- Mottom feeding the tree
- Incubus clawing for power
- Jadis's inaction
- Solomon David's absolute dominion
- Gog-Agog's ironic, whimsical nihilism
- Jagganoth's stoic, utilitarian obedience
These are all products of fear - specifically, fear of obliteration and impotence. Of death, in all its kinds.
Each of them is obsessed with seeking royalty through their own perspective, and are terrified that they're going to fail. Endlessly scared that they could one day be (or are already) helpless in the grasp of a greater power - be that a person or phenomena.
In addition to preventing any kind of meaningful trust or collaboration, this fear is itself the thing that renders each of them helpless.
I think the above contains the seeds of something very funny:
Despite their desperation to each achieve a unique and unconquerable power, the Seven Demiurges are all still predictable and derivative. None of them have learned from the past, from previous Demiurges, or from their own actions. None of them.
It is obvious that Solomon learned nothing from the failings of those he surpassed. The Monks of the Silent Voice, for one, but also Yulvur Ironblood - whose empire he toppled by simply killing him. The only option Solomon David saw was to be a stronger pillar. This was foolishness, and his worlds burned as a result.
A significant step on would-be-Demiurge Maya's journey to bearing a Key was killing a Demiurge who was desperately clinging onto life by isolating himself and making blood sacrifices of innocents.
She then failed to heed his failure and, without her teacher's mocking intervention, would have continued seeking power out of her own unexamined fear - becoming greedy and negligent like Mammon, or a desperate blood-sacrificer like Mottom.
The pattern repeats. Those who seek power are trapped by it, by their fear of losing it, by their fear of failing or being surpassed. They are trapped in the exact same ways as their predecessors. In this respect, Jadis is correct.
A Litany Against Fear
Having directly faced every other one of the seven Demiurges (and a lot more besides), she directly confronts the Mad Worm Jester, Gog-Agog.
In response to being (lightly) mocked about her hopes and intentions in this desperate eleventh hour, Allison sweeps aside Gog-Agog's needlings about the futility of it all, saying this:
Yeah, fair enough.
At first glance, this might seem like more of the same. Emotions running unchecked, leading to violence, right?
Perhaps not.
By now, in Book 5 of KSBD, Allison has been directly faced with all of the Demiurges' failings. She has seen that Mammon's safe retreat did not save him. That Mottom's ruthless sacrifice of others did not save her. That Incubus's machinations did not gain them anything. That Solomon's refusal to cede an ounce of his strength made him weak. And now, despite their overwhelming power and all-spanning perspectives over past cycles, she is coming to see that neither Gog nor Jag have any mastery of royalty.
Importantly, she saw that her mentor Maya, a once-demiurge-turned-drunkard, learned at least part of this lesson too.
On her path to her Key, Maya grew to fear the hold that others had over her. Yet, borne on a palanquin by obedient servants, her power over others unquestionable, her master Meti was still able to lay her bare with a single question: What next? What was the point of it all? To strive for power out of fear?
And so Maya abandoned her status and power, and fled, and thus lived to see at least half of a true life, full of trust and love. Now, after losing even that, Maya sees no path for herself - torn between knowing that power begets destruction, but also that a lack of it begets vulnerability to that destruction.
Unable to resolve these truths, knowing her master Meti was never able to truly resolve them either, she insists it is crucial that Allison must face the dilemma herself:
Welcome to Philosophy 101. Quickly, discover how to meaningfully enact nonviolence in a violent world! Oops, too slow.
Allison's answer is both endearing and relateable: "Uh... what? I can't answer that!"
Later on, Allison does give a more considered answer: "I can't answer [the question]... yet. All I can see is what's in front of me, and all I can do is keep moving forward."
In other words: It's a horribly complex question, and the answer of 'how to properly confront violent tyranny without perpetuating it' might only be discoverable in the act of trying - and no sooner.
When Allison says she's going to "beat the shit out of every bastard that ruined this world", she's not in an angry, violent rage. She's seen tyranny, and she's decided that action is better than inaction.
An Alternative to Fear
“A dog has more sense than you. He doesn’t think of death at all. Not when he sleeps, not when he bathes, and certainly not when he shits. You and he will both die."
Fear of death turns men into monsters. Maya, thus, also probes Allison about her thoughts on death (twice, actually, going back to their first in-passing encounter). And now, finally, Allison... shrugs.
Allison has been told to strive for her 'full potential' power for many different reasons - and been afraid to do so for just as many reasons. Afraid of her power, of her self, of her past, of her future, of the judgement of others, and of the possibility of failure.
The times when she has come closest to harnessing her power have not, predictably, been when she was afraid.
Mostly, they have been when she has acted to defend others or correct tyranny - and almost always when she was doing so without thought.
Notably, in her reflexive and thoughtless act of Destroying the Blood Tree, ending Mottom's endless parade of blood sacrifices used to preserve her youthful appearance, Allison is explicitly and textually acting as royalty - and thus her ability to tap into her power surges.
And now, having passed through the Demiurges' gauntlet of fears, now facing down Gog-Agog in these last few pages (Book 5, 3-76 to 3-78), Allison explicitly rejects not just the comforting defence of irony but the very fear of meaninglessness in the face of unfathomable vastness of any kind - multiple universes, meaningless suffering, powerful gods, time loops, even death itself.
There is no fear. Equally, there is nothing that justifies Allison's claim to power. There is no grand meaning or purpose. There is no undoing the horrors that have come to pass.
But she has a (maybe) sword, and an all-powerful, undefeatable Demiurge who has been killing rats and dreaming of grand purpose is about to kill again.
What else is there to do but, in foolish defiance, ready her blade and strike them dead without thought?
"She who strikes without thinking can cut God."
What Next?
As of yet, we can only speculate on the decisions Allison will make after finally conquering all the tyrant Demiurges and freeing the multiverse from their petty, destructive yokes - or even what it would mean to meaningfully 'conquer' them in the first place.
How does one go about breaking the wheel of violence?
The problem is, simply, that it is trivial to learn to cut - even a fool can do it. One can never, ever, expect a world where would-be tyrants do not learn of its power. Thus, to exist without tyranny, every free person will forever require a defence.
This is why the Monks of the Silent Voice, keepers of Ki Rata and teachers of Solomon David, were always doomed to fail.
They sought to do the impossible - to be powerful enough to keep the 'most dangerous' powers to themselves, always remaining ready to strike against tyrants who independently discovered the power of Ki Rata - and intervening in none of the "lesser" struggles that ended their world.
Instead, they hoarded their power - and made themselves a single, prideful point of failure (a mistake their destroyer, Solomon David himself, would not learn from).
If you do not want those with power to wield it against the innocent, you must strike them first, before their harm is complete.
Thus, you must strike learn to cut faster than the tyrant, without thought. Without hesitation. The fool's thoughtless cut is the only path to existence without tyranny - and therefore, towards royalty.
In fact, it is possible to imagine that the only justifiable cut is one made reflexively in the face of injustice.
But such a cut is still a tragedy. Being justifiable does not make it any less tragic.
In fact, nobody actually proficient with the art of cutting in the universe of KSBD tends to say otherwise.
All true masters of the sword in its many forms (in varying degrees of severity and despair) have said that it is a barbaric, crude, and corrupting thing that has no beauty - only the deep ugliness of its simple, fundamental reality. A sword is an extension of the hand that cuts. There is no value in the act of cutting another.
I am eager to see what a Fully Ascended Demiurge Allison, with her ability to trust other people and her steadfast resolution that Something Must Be Done, No Matter What Doing It Costs Her, makes of this truth once her cutting motion is complete.
In fact, if royalty is a continuous cutting motion, but a proper cut requires self-annihilation... what does 'complete' even mean?
"Tragedy is just the name given to the span of time time that follows every victory."