Yasha is observant.

Yasha, spawned in the 1900s. Sideblog for posts about Kill Six Billion Demons.

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

What would you consider "sticking the landing" in the case of ksbd?

it's a good question to ask. i don't know for certain. heavy spoilers for all of ksbd.

so the fundamental tension of KSBD seems to be about violence - it's evil, it's everything that's wrong with the world, and yet it's cool as hell, it's your only way of actually influencing the world, it cannot be forsworn entirely, and yet it's also a game that can't be won, and the people who think they've won it have won nothing at all.

Maya wanted to wield power, but to what end?

but this is not satisfying - if Maya had become a noodle seller, what would become of the world?

but if violence is all there is:

Jagganoth embodies this paradox. he is, in some sense, a liberatory figure here:

his goals have only expanded since:

he is trapped. he repeats, over and over again, the same war:

so what does a satisfying ending look like? something beyond "Jagganoth loses" - something that tries to answer all these unanswerable questions, to break the endless cycle, to liberate the innocent from the brutal and cruel, and to do all this without being trite or cheap or cliched. it's a tall order!

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

The Atum/Animus is not a sign of wisdom, let alone Royalty. This text makes it clear: The crown is worn by "those warriors or sages that have cultivated enough strength", and the shiniest and most glorious examples were those of the demiurges that ravaged the multiverse in their greed. Whether a character has a few soul flames flickering around their head or a full demiurge-halo-crown, this does not mean that in this moment they are speaking or acting with wisdom, it means they are speaking or acting with willpower, which of course translates to magical and martial power in this setting.

This gets pretty obvious in the exchange of Maya and Meti:

Maya, who is an idiot-warlord thinking herself a god at this point in her life, has her radiant Atum crown; Meti, who as far as we know is Royalty, does not even have a flicker of it.

So this?

And this?

Those are not scenes of Allison attaining or demonstrating any semblance of Royalty. That's Allison deciding she'll make herself a King - a thing Royalty would never do.

Her subsequent actions - disregarding the Republic's guardsmen as beneath her and stepping on them as if they were dirt, for instance - are indicators of her becoming more like the demiurges, which indicates to me that Zoss has failed to find an heir he would consider worthy once again. If all he needed was someone like this Allison, well, Mottom and Solomon would have fit the bill. And hey look:

In a moment in which she divides YISUN's many selves into "people who matter" (herself, her friends, her enemies) and "people that don't deserve to even be addressed or acknowledged" (everyone without the power to match her), there it is again! But bear in mind, ontologically, cosmically, these people are no less God than she is.

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

Here he goes again! My boy Au Vam, the anti-YISUN. YISUN loves Her fire metaphors and directly and explicitly encourages passion and pure willpower as the route to take in all things. Au Vam, the only demiurge who didn't suck absolute shit, comes in swinging and goes "not only is God a liar, She's also a loser."

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

The thing about Solomon David is that he believes his own words. Ultimately, he is lying to himself about wanting a successor, but he believes it when we see him talk to Zaid in King of Swords. He knows he's a tyrant, too, and the way he says it implies that he is aware that this is one of his shortcomings as a ruler. But he cannot be anything else; I have said elsewhere that I believe Solomon would become Royalty very quickly if he simply abdicated, but he can't do that, either. Solomon hates power that is not being used. His family, his planet, were butchered because there were people that could have stopped it but chose not to for their principles. It seems to me that the very thought that he could be anything like the masters he ended up killing must fill him with enough disgust that it would tie him to his throne and methods for ten thousand years without the machinations of Zoss and Jagganoth, no matter how much he understands that this is not going to create the best possible society for his people. He can only ever be a fascist tyrant because if there is a single child that dies in the Celestial Empire because he was not in charge, he cannot forgive himself. Whatever suffering, death, and crime exists despite his rule is acceptable - he knows he did what he could. And since he does not have to answer to anyone but himself, that is reason enough.

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

Two readings of "Reach Heaven Through Violence"

Perhaps Royalty must be understood as the full rejection of God's will.

The will of God cannot be for individuals to be Royalty - YISUN knowing Herself perfectly was the state of affairs before Her divine suicide. If Royalty was the purpose of life or the fulfillment of Her intentions, Creation would not have come about. Based on Her love for Ys-Aesma, explicitly for Her hateful, violent nature, it seems likely that the will of God is for us to live exactly like that - brutal, filthy, mindless, selfish, and completely ignorant that every act of violence we inflict upon anything is like a madman harming himself. This adds up considering the workings of nature, evolution, politics, and so on - all that matters is success, looking out for your own advantage above all else is almost universally rewarded.

Royalty is the understanding of the meaning of the True Name of God, which is I. An idiot will look at that and declare "I am God, thus I get to do as I please, harm as I please, take as I please." This is the way in which the animals in YISUN's garden know of Her true name. The bird is not Royalty - it is a beast that kills to live and cares for nothing but itself. It knows the name but does not understand it or its implications. Reach Heaven Through Violence, little idiot - kill and kill and kill some more! As long as you can get away with it, it's allowed! You can live in Heaven on Earth if only you are skilled enough at killing anyone who defies you.

Royalty, then is the understanding that this "I" stretches across the cosmos, and beyond it. There is nothing that is not "I". In fact, even "Nothing" is contained in "I". In understanding that one is not distinct from anything else, one breaks through YISUN's original lie - that of duality, of self and not-self. Royalty refuses - or perhaps is unable - to ignore the first three answers from Spasms 8. The reason for existence is self-deception; the key to living in harmony is non-existence. Royalty is the harmony you reach by seeing through God's self-deception. However, in doing so, it is revealed that ultimately, all action is futile. There is no need for achievement, justice, glory, or even life, just as Meti lived in a barrel begging rather than using her unmatched martial power to rule or liberate anyone from oppression. Reach Heaven Through Violence - the ultimate Heaven of Royalty can be reached by committing the ultimate violence, namely violating God's will.

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

I always like when KSBD lore brings up some new tidbit of information about the Yellow City. Clearly, Vesh was not a utopia, but its Pankrator Au Vam was a principled ruler who believed in fair government, or at least that treating everyone justly and equally would result in a sense of unity he could exploit for military purposes, which is very different, but not necessarily in a meaningful way. So you have all those things he said about ruling, and his criticisms of other rulers such as Hastet Om. Every time the flavor texts give us anything about his personality or strategies, it either explicitly says "Thus did Au Vam win nearly all of his battles" or "What force could stand up to that?" as the conclusion, or implicitly gives the impression that this was a great mind, a master of strategy who was deeply knowledgable about government, warfare, and the hearts of all people. Going from the things people say about Au-Vam and the Yellow City, he seems an insurmountable powerhouse of military might and political maneuvering. "What force could stand up to that?", indeed.

The Yellow City fell in the Universal War. The Middle Army was taken over, presumably first by Jantris of the Dead Men, then by Murder The Gods And Topple Their Thrones, then by Incubus. All I read of Au Vam is his brilliance, fairness, justice, forethought. All I see of Au Vam is that he was beaten and replaced by people who had no skill nor interest beyond violence.

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

At this point I'm sort of hoping for Allison to be defeated by Jagganoth. I want Zoss to have to come to the realization that liberation lies in letting go of things, in non-control. If after thousands of attempts, after enough cycles of this that my good friend Gog-Agog had to grow into thousands, millions, possibly billions of bodies in order to remember them all, he actually succeeds in getting what he wants, then the recent lesson that Solomon had to learn would go from "you cannot control everything. Let go." to "you just didn't try hard enough to control everything." I would find that immensely narratively unsatisfying.

But on the other hand, what would have been the point of Maya teaching Allison the maybe sword? Her whole training arc, is that for nothing? Philosophically, that's more meaningful, I think, but it is also narratively unsatisfying.

Jadis has seen Allison fail, and Jadis is omniscient. The immediate follow-up to that might be "What is omniscience to true Royalty", but then again, as far as my understanding goes, true Royalty does not take sides. YISUN did not defeat the Red Eyed King, and neither did she stop Aesma from doing so; Meti could probably have killed Incubus without lifting a finger, but allowed him to kill her; it is said that Royalty can use all the forms of the Art, but are above doing so. So if Allison does attain Royalty, she might just realize that this is just another act of a madman tearing at himself, and turn away to let it all die. Or she might not. This isn't a flow chart, after all, there's a guy making the decision for what should happen here.

[fleetingresponsibility]

an interesting problem, because I doubt the morale, as far as there is intended to be one, is that royalty is passive and accepting of events as is, this oneness with the world whatever it may be

allison has in the moments where she was most like royalty tries to change things, in both to the linited extent of her abilities at thr time and found peace with that but also in wild neglect of her limitations

I think she told nadia ohm that she may be an idiot but she is an idiot who is trying? it's been a while

what I keep coming back to is abbadons writing about thr blade of want in the K6BD apocrypha, my take on this is that true royalty wield their desires as a blade to affect change instead of being a tool of their desires like aesma was

BUT in line with metis realization of using the power of the keys akin to a very sharp rock, even trying to change the world is a foolish endeavour because the wheel turns ever towards ruin

but sometimes you have to be an idiot whos trying, even if all things inevitably ends in death and don't mean anything, not to build your throne and declare youe royalty, something allison has never done heraelf iirc, but because otherwise a giant warmonger ends the world in your stead

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

I might of course be misinterpreting this, but I do think that Royalty is about passivity, or at least affecting the world as little and as gently as possible. Yes, there's all this talk about the blade of want, but in the moment in which Maya recognized Allison's wisdom (or so I interpret the scene), Allison talks about how swords are stupid. YISUN never commits an act of violence that I know of, and simply lets all things develop, and the final act of the gods was the same as YISUN's: suicide. In annihilating themselves as immortals, they set the example for mortals to annihilate their selfs (note the difference). If we accept Intra and Meti to have been Royalty (I guess they could have been lying about that), then I think that also tracks; neither of them were pacifists, but Meti (once Royalty) tried to teach people to just live simple lives, not to take down tyrants and make the world a better place, while Intra did kill people, but afaict only if he happened to come across them on his path. I don't think she is Royalty, but White Chain recently came to a realization that allowing yourself to be crushed by the wheel of history could be the natural, correct way to act.

Nadia's issue was, as I understand it, participating in the evil of power. She was passive only insofar as it benefitted her, allowing countless women to be murdered for her peaches of immortality; she could be quite active to kill, for example, emmissaries that had offended her, and to preserve the status quo of her being Imperiatrix, ravaging countless worlds. But she did shed some passivity, after her encounter with Allison, and started killing more of her courtiers. I don't think Mottom as we see here in the Treasure Fortress of Yre was more Royalty than before.

According to Abbadon, Royalty is the understanding of the true name of God, which is of course "I". Since every "I" is YISUN, that means every "you" is YISUN, every "he", "she", "they", "it", and so on. I don't see how death can still matter to someone who truly understands this (but I may be biased bc of my affection for and interpretation of the Heart Sutra). The multiverse is an aspect of YISUN. If the multiverse dies, YISUN will still be there, since YISUN transcends life and death to begin with.

Bit of an aside, but does Jagganoth want to destroy the multiverse? That was Metatron's plan, but Jagganoth at least claims to be against it:

Mind you he's not likely to be trying to create a nice world for everyone to live in, either, and I have gotten the impression that the characters straight up don't believe him (tbf, I probably wouldn't risk it, either).

[killsixbillionbuddhas]

At this point I'm sort of hoping for Allison to be defeated by Jagganoth. I want Zoss to have to come to the realization that liberation lies in letting go of things, in non-control. If after thousands of attempts, after enough cycles of this that my good friend Gog-Agog had to grow into thousands, millions, possibly billions of bodies in order to remember them all, he actually succeeds in getting what he wants, then the recent lesson that Solomon had to learn would go from "you cannot control everything. Let go." to "you just didn't try hard enough to control everything." I would find that immensely narratively unsatisfying.

But on the other hand, what would have been the point of Maya teaching Allison the maybe sword? Her whole training arc, is that for nothing? Philosophically, that's more meaningful, I think, but it is also narratively unsatisfying.

Jadis has seen Allison fail, and Jadis is omniscient. The immediate follow-up to that might be "What is omniscience to true Royalty", but then again, as far as my understanding goes, true Royalty does not take sides. YISUN did not defeat the Red Eyed King, and neither did she stop Aesma from doing so; Meti could probably have killed Incubus without lifting a finger, but allowed him to kill her; it is said that Royalty can use all the forms of the Art, but are above doing so. So if Allison does attain Royalty, she might just realize that this is just another act of a madman tearing at himself, and turn away to let it all die. Or she might not. This isn't a flow chart, after all, there's a guy making the decision for what should happen here.

[today-tastes-like-honey]

I keep forgetting this about Mother Om but the first Demiurge Allison meets (other than Zoss) is like "please this is so awful every aspect of my life is misery I hate being a ruler I am just too afraid of what it would mean to change. I'm explicitly calling myself a coward and I just don't want to die please please please take my throne I am begging you" and on the other end you have the only dude there who actually likes being a king, and even he goes "man if only I could give away my throne. Not to anyone of course he has to be able to protect my people and govern adequately. This means there's basically no one. Fuck. Listen I want to be enlightened. I have got to stop being a King so I can start being enlightened. What to do."

But Mother Om does not really want to give up her power; that would mean death for her, as she relies on the human sacrifices made to her husband to maintain her youth. Nor does Solomon David actually want to abdicate; he dreams of Royalty in the way that a medieval Pope, surrounded by gold and murder in his heart, dreams of the Kingdom of Heaven. It's something they know they're supposed to want, but don't actually want. Had Solomon David surrendered his throne not as a result of Jagganoth's attack and his subsequent feelings of inadequacy but simply to pursue Royalty, he would immediately have become Royalty, I'm pretty sure. This is Zoss' problem, too, of course. The man's still clamoring for an heir and trying to get things just right. My guy. Let it go and let it die.

[today-tastes-like-honey]

I do think that Kill Six Billion Demons is probably the single most pro-pacifism work of English literature I have ever read in my whole entire life, but I do also feel kind of insane for thinking that.