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Who What Now posted:Unfortunately pacifism cannot protect against violence. In the end you'll just be the good man doing nothing while evil triumphs. You're missing her point. It's that violence can't protect against violence either.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:10
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There Bias Two posted:You're missing her point. It's that violence can't protect against violence either. yeah, a case of "be a good person doing nothing while evil triumphs, or be an evil person actively helping evil triumph"
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Apr 25, 2019 16:13
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what meti fails to consider in her analysis is that shes attempting to meet systemic issues w individual actions
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Apr 25, 2019 16:14
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violence can totally protect against violence, in fact id say its strictly speaking necessary that its employed as a path for change alongside more palatable routes
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Apr 25, 2019 16:15
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Tollymain posted:violence can totally protect against violence, in fact id say its strictly speaking necessary that its employed as a path for change alongside more palatable routes Without discussing the merits of your opinion or attacking you, I believe *her* response would be to say that you were a delusional fool who believed that things would be fine if only the right person were violent. I think this is Solomon David's approach to ruling.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:18
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yes, and shed be largely right all the same, pacifists only succeed when theres distinctly worse alternatives awaiting their oppressors
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Apr 25, 2019 16:21
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Meti might say a lot of things, but she still lived in a pot in the market for years, complaining while the world went to poo poo around her.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:24
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wiegieman posted:Meti might say a lot of things, but she still lived in a pot in the market for years, complaining while the world went to poo poo around her. Yeah, she's totally aware that she hosed up. Her self-loathing is definitely the point.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:25
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Tollymain posted:violence can totally protect against violence, in fact id say its strictly speaking necessary that its employed as a path for change alongside more palatable routes it's not that she hasn't considered it, it's that she has and concluded that just doesn't work Think about Zoss's doubts when Allison starts going sociopathic and leaves Cio. Zoss's plan revolves around what you're saying: a powerful person that rejects tyranny. When he talks about this cycle being different, it implies that even he hasn't actually seen success. Powerful warriors turn into oppressive monsters. Zoss thinks this path can be broken, Meti thinks it can't.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:26
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If there's anything to get out of the setting it's that Everything is a lie of YISUNs, and therefore is mutable with sufficiently applied will. Violence is only inescapable insofar as no one has committed to the final act of violence that is shattering the illusion and drawing all back to YISUN. Who would then kill themselves again just out of spite and to prove the frog right, while laughing about the good joke all the way through.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:30
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Shame the very wise frog is dead.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:32
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Meti really seems to strive to turn people away from learning the sword. Part of her Sword Manual is literally 'learn a dozen other things first, and once you have learned those things, throw away the sword and live a better life because swords are trash'. When Maya first approaches here, she shuts her down flatly. Now, 'ancient master refuses to train student' is a kung fu trope, but when Maya begs Meti gets pretty worked up - she manifests a crown in her fury and tells Maya to stay a noodle vendor. This doesn't seem to be a 'testing your candidates' thing to me. I suspect that Meti's belief is that training in the sword is pointless, because it only teaches you how to breed more violence. In practicing and mastering the sword, you will murder lots of people, and while you can choose to murder certain people or not, doling out violence inevitably generates more violence - either those people have friends or family that will seek you out, people will challenge you for their own glory or mastery, or you'll accrue something that other people now want to take, requiring you to kill them too. Maybe you'll try to implement a righteous sort of violence, but it's still violence and still breeds more in turn. So, forget about learning the sword. Be a noodle vendor. Yes, violence is inescapable, and as a noodle vendor you may be murdered by someone else. Maybe some idiot with a sword will kill your whole family and burn down your shop. But that might not happen soon, and in the meantime you can be happy, you can marry, you can have kids, you can feed your neighbors and share friendships and achieve a small span of peace and joy before you die. Training in the sword won't stop you dying! It won't even protect you from violence. You'll simply die to a higher caliber of idiot, and you'll have wasted your short time in preparing for that death. Possibly worse, you'll also bring death to other people around you constantly, instead of doing something useful with yourself. Incubus was offered a bowl of noodles and instead took a sword. Has that sword, at any point since, really ever made him happy or content? Did he improve the world with it? Has he ever been at peace? If he had taken the noodles, he would not be the ruler of 111,111 worlds, but he would have been well fed. He may have made a friend in a noodle vendor, and he might have found a period of happiness in his life. That's not certain, of course, but choosing the sword definitely wouldn't lead him to any of those ends. What I'm not sure about is what Meti thinks you should do if you're a big enough idiot to choose the sword anyway. She doesn't seem dedicated to being a protector or guardian, she's just living in a barrel, but she also doesn't seem to have really adopted an 'aloof mastery' like the Ki Rata monks. She's elected to train Maya, but what is it she really wants to train Maya to do with that training, if anything? Also the discussion is kind of complicated by the fact that Meti's world includes functional gods among the people. When the list of crazy violent assholes includes people who can burn planets and extinguish suns, opposing them with violence gets pretty iffy. Regular people can't just rise up to depose a ruler if they have the personal power to kill everyone in sight, so for violence to be useful you have to escalate it to the absence of everything else, which mostly makes it hard not to be an rear end in a top hat yourself.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:33
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Who What Now posted:Unfortunately pacifism cannot protect against violence. In the end you'll just be the good man doing nothing while evil triumphs. She's neither a pacifist, nor trying to be the good man. She's tired of fighting because she spent her life doing it and realized it never ends, and she knows killing isn't a good thing and has resolved herself to dying to her numerous enemies acquired through a lifetime of killing.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:35
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If it takes an idiot to be happy with the sword than that is what I shall be.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:43
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There Bias Two posted:You're missing her point. It's that violence can't protect against violence either. If anything she's saying the exact opposite. She's saying if you're gonna do something so rash and stupid as try to protect others, you'd better go all in and be ready to strike the first blow or you will fail. Again, look at the way Maya has primarily used her skills to be a protector - and she does it exceedingly fast and instinctively. It's not stupid because it's the wrong thing to do - it's stupid because it is exhausting and basically impossible without devoting every fiber of your being to it, giving up everything else you hold dear to focus completely on being ready to make the first strike before the other guy can. If there is an aggressor, and you want to be the protector, you have to be way, way, WAY better than the aggressor to even have a chance of succeeding. Ashcans posted:What I'm not sure about is what Meti thinks you should do if you're a big enough idiot to choose the sword anyway. She doesn't seem dedicated to being a protector or guardian, she's just living in a barrel, but she also doesn't seem to have really adopted an 'aloof mastery' like the Ki Rata monks. She's elected to train Maya, but what is it she really wants to train Maya to do with that training, if anything? You could say that Meti's attempts to keep Maya a noodle vendor were her way of trying to protect her, and in giving in to training her, Meti failed. But at the same time, she knows that SOMEONE has to be trained in sword law, lest there never be any protectors at all. I mean, at the end of the day, she DID take students, no? She HAS to have a reason for that, however unclear the reasons/judgement of taking Incubus on as well are. Rotten Red Rod fucked around with this message at 16:56 on Apr 25, 2019 |
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Apr 25, 2019 16:50
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Ashcans posted:
Yeah this is a really profound difference between political theorizing in K6BD and IRL. Solomon David created a second sun because he liked having one. And his language suggests that it was an act of his singular will. IRL, even absolute monarchs are pragmatically restrained by public discontent and ultimately derive power from social networks of some form. The scale of violence that single people can pull is extremely disruptive to any model we've had to develop.
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Apr 25, 2019 16:51
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There Bias Two posted:You're missing her point. It's that violence can't protect against violence either. Except that it can?
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Apr 25, 2019 17:05
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also love that the 3 people they were watching have ditched weapons and powers and are now just beating the crap out of each other with lovely haymakers
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Apr 25, 2019 17:06
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This is an excellent exegesis. But as to the part about the opponents being gods with power no group of ruled can match... unless the demiurge is willing to burn down their own empire around them* they can't be everywhere at once. Sure, massed armed resistance won't stop them, but unless you're under their direct eye they still need someone to rule in their stead... and those people can be toppled or worked around. Hence why Mottom, Mammon, etc. all have giant armies. * TBF this is a gigantic caveat, and I have no doubt the demiurges would be perfectly happy to blow up multiple worlds to quash rebellions on them.
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Apr 25, 2019 17:08
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In this universe life is a flame. Both white and black, cold and hot, life is still a fire that consumes. Consumption is life and life is consumption. To exist is to burn and to burn is to kill, whether by blade or breath. It matters not whether you embrace this truth or reject it; you are a murderer all the same.
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Apr 25, 2019 17:10
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Rotten Red Rod posted:If anything she's saying the exact opposite. She's saying if you're gonna do something so rash and stupid as try to protect others, you'd better go all in and be ready to strike the first blow or you will fail. Again, look at the way Maya has primarily used her skills to be a protector - and she does it exceedingly fast and instinctively. It's not stupid because it's the wrong thing to do - it's stupid because it is exhausting and basically impossible without devoting every fiber of your being to it, giving up everything else you hold dear to focus completely on being ready to make the first strike before the other guy can.
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Apr 25, 2019 17:12
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Meti's teachings can't be flawless, because this comic only features broken people.
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Apr 25, 2019 17:15
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nimby posted:Meti's teachings can't be flawless, because this comic only features broken people. they’re flawless for one who had chosen to follow sword law, in no small part because their first lesson is to never follow sword law at all
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Apr 25, 2019 17:17
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Rotten Red Rod posted:We haven't seen anything to prove this. Maya certainly got powerful enough to claim one of the 7 keys, and we've seen her battle an angel granted the power of Metatron himself, win by slicing it in half in one blow, and survive the resulting explosion (barely, but still). We don't really yet know the upper limits of her power compared to Meti or Incubus, and the circumstances by which she lost the key. Or the circumstances in which Incubus killed Meti. If she was capable (in the comic) of what Meti does casually (in the text around the comic) she wouldn't be a Pursuer, in the same sense that a healthy adult does not need to stop to battle each individual ant that gets in his way between where he is and where he's going. We're seeing her whole schtick here and what holds her back, that's the point of these flashbacks. Ashcans posted:What I'm not sure about is what Meti thinks you should do if you're a big enough idiot to choose the sword anyway. She doesn't seem dedicated to being a protector or guardian, she's just living in a barrel, but she also doesn't seem to have really adopted an 'aloof mastery' like the Ki Rata monks. She's elected to train Maya, but what is it she really wants to train Maya to do with that training, if anything? I don't see anything to suggest she has a grand plan her students are meant to serve. She's only learned to do this one, utterly useless thing in life; and it's left her bitter, lonely, and utterly without direction. She's teaching students because they came up and asked her to, and what else is she gonna do besides hang out in a barrel and hate herself. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Apr 25, 2019 |
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Apr 25, 2019 17:28
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Motherfucker posted:If it takes an idiot to be happy with the sword than that is what I shall be. Fortunatly because you are a happ idiot with the sword, it turns out you are an idiot with the sword. At least your lie will be happy and short.
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Apr 25, 2019 17:36
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Ashcans posted:What I'm not sure about is what Meti thinks you should do if you're a big enough idiot to choose the sword anyway. She doesn't seem dedicated to being a protector or guardian, she's just living in a barrel, but she also doesn't seem to have really adopted an 'aloof mastery' like the Ki Rata monks. She's elected to train Maya, but what is it she really wants to train Maya to do with that training, if anything? The way I see it is that Meti's perspective is "if you're going to take up the sword, you might as well be the best at it", and that what you do with that sword is none of her business as long as you do the hell out of it. And in fact what you do with it is none of your business because things like higher goals require having a moment's distraction from being the perfect swordswoman.
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Apr 25, 2019 18:10
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Tenebrais posted:The way I see it is that Meti's perspective is "if you're going to take up the sword, you might as well be the best at it", and that what you do with that sword is none of her business as long as you do the hell out of it. And in fact what you do with it is none of your business because things like higher goals require having a moment's distraction from being the perfect swordswoman. this is my take on it too and further reinforces that incubus wasn't a student but a prop for maya's own instruction incubus would of course instantly kill the rat. so maya had two choices - let the rat die, or kill incubus in its defense. either one results in death, so why would maya have chosen the latter? if it's because incubus was about to kill unthinkingly, then that would make for a poor reason, because she would have had to do the same in order to cut him down. and while she's ruminating on the philosophy of her cut, that cut is already halfway around the world, rapidly approaching the back of her neck. it's a hopeless situation, a paradox with no solutions, and that's why meti's most valuable and ignored lesson to maya was "spurn the sword and go back to noodles" the sanctioned action is not to Kill or to Protect, the sanctioned action is to Cut, annihilating all around you as surely as you annihilate yourself. maya understood this too late but understood it well enough to recognize the sword's poison and become itinerant; while her cuts continue to travel the world, pursuing her just as she pursues allison, she evades them for now. incubus, who delights in the result of cutting rather than the act of it, who in fact immerses himself in the gory bounty of his cuts and defends the glory he believes that they have won him, has remained still. meanwhile his hundred thousand cuts have traveled a hundred thousand worlds and grown a hundred thousand-fold. they will find him in the end. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Apr 25, 2019 |
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Apr 25, 2019 18:22
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Tenebrais posted:The way I see it is that Meti's perspective is "if you're going to take up the sword, you might as well be the best at it", and that what you do with that sword is none of her business as long as you do the hell out of it. And in fact what you do with it is none of your business because things like higher goals require having a moment's distraction from being the perfect swordswoman. This is about my take too. Only a fool wants to be a killer, and even if you can argue, rightly in my opinion, that sometimes violence is necessary because sadly there are already violent assholes out there and letting them run rampant is worse, at best you are undertaking a path of self-destruction that won't make you happy, and more likely than not you'll cause a whole lot of problems yourself in pursuit of your goal, plus it takes a hell of a lot of ego to decide that you know best as to who should live or die and that you have the right to take someone else's lives. So, what she tells those who want to throw themselves on that pyre is, first, don't, and second, if you do anyway, then you may as well burn as bright and hot as possible, so anyone who rejects her more sensible advice she teaches how to become the ultimate in the art of annihilation, with no regard to anything else, as that's what it requires.
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Apr 25, 2019 18:54
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It's worth considering, meanwhile, that dedicating your mind and soul to the art of cutting the way Meti espouses is no more or less Royal than dedicating your mind and soul to the art of, say, producing fancy teacups. And that's hilarious.
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Apr 25, 2019 19:20
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:If she was capable (in the comic) of what Meti does casually (in the text around the comic) she wouldn't be a Pursuer, in the same sense that a healthy adult does not need to stop to battle each individual ant that gets in his way between where he is and where he's going. We're seeing her whole schtick here and what holds her back, that's the point of these flashbacks. That's not her philosophy though. The sanctioned action is to cut. You don't think about whether they will actually danger you or not, if they are in the way of your goal, you consider them already dead because your sword has already started moving before you even thought about it. Otherwise it's too late. Anyway, I'm not saying Meti WASN'T way stronger than Maya (I think she probably was), just that we we don't have enough evidence of the limits of Maya's true strength yet to determine for absolute sure that she isn't.
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Apr 25, 2019 19:23
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If Maya was as powerful and single-minded as Meti is portrayed to be, 6 Juggernaut Star's "this is who I wheelie am" speech would have been a lot shorter.
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Apr 25, 2019 19:36
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And yet Incubus was able to kill Meti.
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Apr 25, 2019 19:47
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The sanctioned act is to never stop spinning, literally ever
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Apr 25, 2019 20:02
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Celestial objects are pretty Royal.
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Apr 25, 2019 20:03
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Dead Reckoning posted:"this is who I wheelie am" took me a moment but wow that's good
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Apr 25, 2019 20:18
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It is, though now I'm going to read J-dog's lines in Elmer Fudd's voice.
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Apr 25, 2019 20:21
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Rotten Red Rod posted:That's not her philosophy though. The sanctioned action is to cut. You don't think about whether they will actually danger you or not, if they are in the way of your goal, you consider them already dead because your sword has already started moving before you even thought about it. Otherwise it's too late. That's what I'm saying; if Meti really wanted to have a chat with Allison she woulda just walked right through the pursuers and demiurges like they weren't even there; the core of her teaching is that a master in the act of pursuing their magical kung-fu tao cannot be stopped by any force save a more focused will. Maya gets distracted from her purpose and tied up in one-on-one duels with randos. She beats them, because she's good, but she isn't able to fully commit because she still retains the self (which probably makes her a much healthier person all-round, but a poor disciple of Meti), and in all the fuss she totally loses track of the reason she's there swinging a sword at people in the first place. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Apr 25, 2019 |
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Apr 25, 2019 20:28
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Rotten Red Rod posted:And yet Incubus was able to kill Meti.
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Apr 25, 2019 20:28
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Dead Reckoning posted:Consider that perhaps Meti did not desire to live. Meti's the grandmaster of Cutting, don't know nothing about this fancy "not getting cut" stuff
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Apr 25, 2019 20:33
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Not getting cut is a necessary component of Cutting Your Opponent Down.
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Apr 25, 2019 20:36
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