Reach Heaven Through Violence (Kill Six Billion Demons)

That must be a pretty powerful gun to both take a chunk out of him and knock him off the ship.

 

or she's just........ lucky ;0

 

Literally flooding the market.

 

The cat's okay!

 

[NOISE ONLY DOGS CAN HEAR]

 

*same noise*

 

So I’ve reread this comic again, and I really wish there was a list of everything that inspired it. I know vaguely that someone mentioned Hindu mythology I think? Honestly I just want to know if any philosophy was involved, because every time YISUN is brought up I think about Greek philosophy. (Zeno specifically.)

 

the influence i see the most is definitely hindu and buddhist ideologies imo, especially in the theological system and the liturgies

 

The treatment of paradoxes and lying definitely strikes me as more akin to Hinduism than Greek philosophy; in Western philosophy Zeno's paradoxes are seen as problems to be solved, rather than embraced.

 

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Gnosticism have all been mentioned as influences IIRC? I think there was a particular kind of gnosticism listed, but I don't remember what it was.

 

The author is doing a good job with having women on the pages, because as soon as I saw this page my reaction was "where are all the women?" and it was a big shock rather than same old, and I think it is very telling of Solomon David.

 

Yeah it's definitely something you're meant to read into

http://killsixbilliondemons.tumblr.com/post/177113014445/are-all-of-solomon-davids-councilors-men

 

I need to read his tumblr more often. For instance, learning that Allison, despite everything that has happened so far, is still only a level 3 Idiot.

 

Oh I should definitely check his tumblr more often then.

 

One thing about the title page that bothers me -- Allison's hair is looking a lot like Incubus' hair in meatspace does, long and white. I'm guessing we're gonna see more fallout from that deal.

 

Unsurprisingly, it seems that Solomon David is using the usual monomaniacal dictator succession strategy of "fuck you, I'm gonna live forever".
Alternatively, his succession strategy is the slightly less usual but still popular "destroy it all before my body is cold."

 

I think the reason all the councilors look like him has something to do with the fact that his sin is Pride. They're either his descendants or different iterations/shards of his identity. Not sure how to square that with the succession comment though.

 

It's REALLY interesting to me that he has no successor, possibly even no consort? And is entirely focused on ruling, in particular justice, because SO MUCH of the drama from the Biblical accounts of Solomon and David's lives revolved around their marriages. David had multiple wives, but the most important were Michal and Bathsheba. Michal was the daughter of David's predecessor Saul, for whom he paid with the FORESKINS OF TWO HUNDRED PHILISTINES as a bride price, but she turned against him after he succeeded her father and danced in an "undignified manner" in front of the entire city Jerusalem when the Ark of the Covenant was brought back into the city. As a kid I was told that he hiked his robes up over his belt and accidentally exposed his privates while dancing. For this Michal was supposedly cursed with infertility. Bathsheba, meanwhile, was originally the wife of Uriah the Hittite, but after David saw her while she was bathing on the roof of her husband's home he arranged for Uriah's death and took Bathsheba for himself. Significantly, between this act and the warfare he'd been engaged in for pretty much his entire adult life, he was BARRED from building YHWH a proper temple, and ordered BY GOD'S PROPHET to leave the task for his son and successor to accomplish after his death.

Solomon was that successor, and he's remembered by Western culture as a paragon of wisdom and justice. He was once asked by to decide a custody battle between two unmarried women who were housemates (most likely prostitutes, in other words) who had both had babies and were raising them together. However, one woman accidentally rolled over on top of her baby in the night and smothered it, and when she discovered what had happened the next morning she switched the corpse with her housemate's baby. Her housemate saw through the ruse, of course, and so appealed to Solomon for justice. However, the housemate denied everything and claimed it was the other woman's baby who died. As this was long before the invention of DNA testing, Solomon established maternity by ordering that the baby be CHOPPED IN HALF and each woman awarded half a baby. The baby's REAL mother objected and tried to withdraw her case, pleading with him to just give the baby to the other woman. From this Solomon concluded that only the baby's real mother would rather see it alive with someone else than dead in her arms, and ordered her housemate imprisoned. (The baby lived.)

HOWEVER, not everything about Solomon's legacy is considered positive by Biblical standards. Solomon had SEVERAL HUNDRED wives and concubines, nearly all of them gained through political and diplomatic channels, AND HE ACTUALLY ALLOWED THEM TO CONTINUE WORSHIPPING THEIR OWN GODS!!!! This is a HUUUUGE no-no by Biblical standards, as the text states that allowing the worship of "false gods and idols" within Israel's borders angers YHWH and causes Him to turn His face away, which will inevitably result in famine, plague, and defeat in war. If you take later writers literally, Solomon's treatment of his wives is the ULTIMATE CAUSE of every Jewish diaspora. And also, like, un-Jewish behavior by later kings and priests and stuff, but Solomon is the one who set the precedent.

Will ANY of this be relevant to K6BD? I HAVE NO IDEA!!! But Bible study was a DAILY part of my life from the time I learned to read until I was sixteen or so, and I got a little too excited by the chance to show off my knowledge of this particular canon.

Anyway, to wrap things up with a theory I predict Solomon David is going to fall wildly in love with Allison as soon as he sees her, and try to marry her and/or steal her Key. This will cause his powers to fluctuate wildly, because he's stopped focusing on being such a stone-cold badass, and will culminate in Allison picking up the Wheel of the multiverse Aesma-style and smacking him with it in order to make him LEAVE HER ALONE. Nobody likes a creep, creep.

 

In response to the latest update:

HAHAHAHA OH MY GOD SOLOMON DAVID YOU *ASSHOLE!* I managed to completely sidestep this possibility in all my theorizing and yet somehow I do not feel surprised at ALL.

Spoiler

This DOES make me even more curious about his daughters, however.

 

It makes sense that this is the way to select a new Demiurge, considering, but I really do like the fact that he both understands that fact and has enshrined it into law. He does things the Proper Way.
Poor kids, though.

Actually, that makes me wonder about the other Demiurges. Do they have succession plans? Nadia's was apparently "give the key to Allison", but no idea what Mammon or Incubus were going to do.

Jadis probably wants her entire line to just end.