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Yeah, whenever worldbuilding stuff like the demon tiers comes up, I get this feeling like "I should have been taking notes". But the story is followable and good even if you treat that stuff as essentially decoration.
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Apr 28, 2024 07:49
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TwoPair posted:The only part I have a little bit of trouble with is the whole hierarchy of demons (like, I thought Cio was just gone forever after Incubus wrecked the mask) but that's only because they explained that poo poo so long ago and I'm too lazy to reread it. All I remember is black ones are strong, there's some King Demon Satan around just called HIM, and more names turn you weaker until you become Princess. We've never seen an "ivory" devil before, but pale/pallid devils are actually the weakest, ones that can't even speak and are used for menial labor, while the strongest are ebon devils. Nukoku seems to be outside of that hierarchy.
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Apr 28, 2024 07:50
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TwoPair posted:(like, I thought Cio was just gone forever after Incubus wrecked the mask) I'm pretty sure that this is what is supposed to happen when a devil mask is wrecked. Yabalchoath didn't really return, didn't quite reincarnate into Cio just because of the new mask. There were hints and traces of the old in Cio, but it wasn't the same. The same can be true of Nukoku, it maybe isn't Cio but just operates on a retained obsession, the world-changing part is that she seemingly didn't require a mask to keep her form.
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Apr 28, 2024 08:01
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TwoPair posted:The only part I have a little bit of trouble with is the whole hierarchy of demons (like, I thought Cio was just gone forever after Incubus wrecked the mask) What's currently happening is outside of the way devils should work that we know if. What's left of Cio is overpowering the rules through sheer will.
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Apr 28, 2024 09:16
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nimby posted:I'm pretty sure that this is what is supposed to happen when a devil mask is wrecked. Yabalchoath didn't really return, didn't quite reincarnate into Cio just because of the new mask. There were hints and traces of the old in Cio, but it wasn't the same. The same can be true of Nukoku, it maybe isn't Cio but just operates on a retained obsession, the world-changing part is that she seemingly didn't require a mask to keep her form. It's worth noting as well that despite being a notably different person, Cio still held many memories of Yabalchoath's and felt responsibility for them. She also started to act like her in the Vault, and saw echoes of that in herself. "Yabalchoath isn't me, but it could easily be me again." From what little we've seen of Nukoku, one could assume it is a narrative echo. Nukoku is not Cio but has some of her memories. Nukoku has her pain, her regret, her desire. "Cio isn't me. But couldn't I be that again?" I think we'll find Nukoku has something of Cio in her while still being demonstrably different. Whether she has love for Allison in her heart is to be seen, as well. I wonder if we'll see her hair pushed out of her face and see she's missing an eye.
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Apr 28, 2024 09:32
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She's a metaphysical newborn and the only being she knows is hurting her 
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Apr 28, 2024 11:31
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Polaron posted:I don't understand what's going on in this comic any more. I suspect that's half intentional, half me being old. I love the comic a lot, I think it's beautiful and I often find a great deal of its scenes entertaining to read, for various reasons. I feel like it's been consistent from pretty much the beginning that there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule when it comes to absolutely anything. And so I don't expect the comic to be consistent in the things that happen, I just sort of read it as a running montage of scenes the author thinks would be wicked cool to illustrate. And it sure as hell succeeds at that.
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Apr 28, 2024 13:14
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eke out posted:https://twitter.com/Orbitaldropkick/status/1783940731595333808 wow!!!
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Apr 28, 2024 15:28
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Polaron posted:I don't understand what's going on in this comic any more. I suspect that's half intentional, half me being old. I don't quite get what he's going for with New Cioke here. Like all this damage control when she was killed and she comes back just to confirm that actually, Allison gotta move on? And it's not really Cio anyway? I've never been particularly invested in their relationship but I wonder what the conclusion's gonna be.
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Apr 28, 2024 15:31
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We don’t know what’s going on with Nukoku because she was literally introduced this page and hasn’t had a chance to explain herself or interact with anyone beyond setting the most basic stakes. Nukoku is what’s left of Cio. Nukoku isn’t following the normal rules for devils, in a way that implies some weird poo poo. Nukoku wants to go back, eat the worm and remember other lifetimes or wait out this cycle of the universe in the hopes of getting to be Cio and be happy with Allison again. Allison is rejecting this in a frankly callous way, because Allison is also pretty hosed up about all this stuff. This sequence is a good parallel to when Cio and Allison fought in Yre; Allison thought Cio was gone forever and it was her fault then, too. My read of the emotional dynamic is that Allison is telling Nukoku “you’re dead, I can’t try to save you” because like… she needs to believe that it’s done or her resolve to face Jagganoth is going to get really hosed up. She can’t start believing in resurrection now, in turning back the wheel, because then Gog Agog’s offer might land and she might stop moving forward. And then the world dies.
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Apr 28, 2024 15:50
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she also has a lot of guilt for freezing and letting Cio die and it's a lot easier to think that's over and beyond fixing than to try to salvage what's left and make something new.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:11
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TwoPair posted:The only part I have a little bit of trouble with is the whole hierarchy of demons (like, I thought Cio was just gone forever after Incubus wrecked the mask) but that's only because they explained that poo poo so long ago and I'm too lazy to reread it. No, that's pretty much dead on. There is some hierarchy of demons. Cio died. She should have been gone forever. You got it in one as far as I can tell.
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Apr 28, 2024 16:40
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Basically, in their purest form angels are beings of pure thought and no action and devils are beings of pure action and no thought and now both cio and white chain are becoming the opposites of what they 'should' be
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Apr 28, 2024 17:19
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I imagined devils just returned to the void and reformed the same way angels do, since both need some kind of container to function in the real world (armor/masks). Maybe Nukoku is the devil equivalent of White Chain's new state of being, the trigger for their transformations was soul-shattering violence? She only has one name, maybe Ivory is stronger than Black?
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Apr 28, 2024 17:56
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As I understand it, ordinarily devils don't have much of a fixed identity and frequently reinvent themselves. The purpose of the mask and name is to bind them with fixed notions of identity, and without those they'd just dissolve back into chaotic hunger. Nand reassembled Yabalchaoth's mask and re-bound her with the intent of resurrecting her, and in doing so imposed enough of an identity of Yabalchaoth on her that that's who she became, even though there's no way for her to meaningfully contain the same soul flame. Now, Nukoku has done the same thing, but entirely to herself, with nothing more than the barest sliver of mask to push that identity on her. She's a devil who wants to be a specific identity, with a comfortable life of modesty, both things that are supposed to be utterly antithetical to what devils even are.
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Apr 28, 2024 18:04
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Devils seem to be undifferentiated chaotic black flame until they're bound to a mask which grants them identity, and successive tiers of self-development and shedding of excess names refines them up the tiers until they hit single-named Ebon. When Cio died as an Ebon Nand used her original mask to try and recreate her, and it carried enough of a continuity of identity. This Ivory devil DID absorb a bit of Cio's mask--a bit that had been lodged in Allison's body and probably narratively absorbing all her guilt over her death--and now that it's been absorbed into Nukoku she's experiencing the trauma of that death that Allison had metaphorically shed with the physical act of removing the mask shard.
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Apr 28, 2024 18:18
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Yeah, much like White Chain's arc involved redefining what 'angels' are capable of and what it means to be an angel, Cio's arc is doing the same. But where White Chain attained her human-angel form through a moment of supreme self-realization, shattering the vessel that contained her to be her essential soul without it... Cio is doing the opposite. Her essential self, the black flame, is undifferentiated and immortal and without form, but she wants to be her mask, to reassemble her vessel after it was shattered by death. Her self-fashioning is very overtly not 'expression' but 'creation' - and no less moving nor valid for it. I support Nukoku. I also support her and Allison maybe not trying to date immediately, because she very literally needs to be her own person, which is part of why I think Allison is reacting so badly: Nukoku's vision of herself demands a version of Allison that doesn't exist, because that version of Allison saw Cio die.
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Apr 28, 2024 19:03
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Nu already had some sense of self prior to getting the last sliver from Allison, and specifically sought Al out in the first place on Throne. I'm guessing that there are other fragments of Cio's mask in what became Nu.
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Apr 28, 2024 19:05
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I will be the first to admit that I read that as “Irony Devil” at first, and honestly, lol.
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Apr 28, 2024 19:19
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Allison's piece of the mask was drawn to Baby Nukoku, presumably she spent the time skip hoovering up all the broken pieces.
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Apr 28, 2024 19:20
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habeasdorkus posted:Nu already had some sense of self prior to getting the last sliver from Allison, and specifically sought Al out in the first place on Throne. I'm guessing that there are other fragments of Cio's mask in what became Nu. There's little blue streaks inside her carapace, which does to me point in that direction.
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Apr 28, 2024 19:48
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M_Gargantua posted:I will be the first to admit that I read that as “Irony Devil” at first, and honestly, lol. Coming up with a new tier of Devils, as a bit.
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Apr 28, 2024 20:47
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habeasdorkus posted:Nu already had some sense of self prior to getting the last sliver from Allison, and specifically sought Al out in the first place on Throne. I'm guessing that there are other fragments of Cio's mask in what became Nu. except that Rayuba got destroyed so not sure where that would have come from I keep thinking back to that panel in the vault when Cio stabbed Allison with the sword, came to her senses, and said "it happened AGAIN" She already ate the worm right?
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Apr 28, 2024 21:23
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Bilirubin posted:except that Rayuba got destroyed so not sure where that would have come from I think that was about Cio giving into her dark and violent side again, in spite of her constantly struggling to distance herself from Yabalchoath. She also partially physically reverted to Yabalchoath that time. Her looping around to being inverted Yabalchoath now is interesting in a similar way though. It plays heavily with Cio's cynicism-bording-on-nihilism that's come up before:  The nice home and the plants was the farthest she felt like she'd gotten from what she was, and she keeps getting pulled back into that dark place despite her best efforts. I assume the ultimate trajectory is how you actually move past the repeating cycle in a way that doesn't involve total obliteration like Jagganoth's full-on-nihilism. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Apr 28, 2024 |
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Apr 28, 2024 21:34
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TwoPair posted:there's some King Demon Satan around just called HIM That would be quite a twist if it was this guy all along. 
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Apr 28, 2024 21:47
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The king of devils is called "Himself" but it would be pretty rad if he did dabble in Finnish goth rock on the side.
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Apr 28, 2024 21:50
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Allison breaks the wheel by choosing new coke over coke classic
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Apr 28, 2024 22:06
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Yeah, this is an interesting way to have Cio's story come around again, despite her dying - Cio's story is basically the core devil story of the comic the way White Chain's is the core angel story. And it's true that it didn't really conclude with her death; her trajectory ended with her getting dragged back into big, dark drama again then dying. That was the middle point of her previous two times around the story arc. Which leaves an interesting question: What is Allison's role to play, as Cio's girlfriend? She's not the one who will ultimately drive this plot (as with White Chain, part of the point is giving up main character syndrome even when you are the main character, and accepting that other people will make their choices). Maybe she'll have to own up to her guilt about it, but recognize that it's up to Cio (or Nukoku) to ultimately decide what to make of this... while trying to convince her not to eat the worm and be obliterated by Gog. Nobody will ever eat the worm and not be obliterated; Gog herself has been obliterated.
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Apr 28, 2024 22:23
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For some reason I get this impression of Nukoku being Allison and Cio's daughter, rather than being a new incarnation of Cio.Flesh Forge posted:She's a metaphysical newborn and the only being she knows is hurting her Nukoku's mother is dead, and her father/other-mother/however you want to describe their relationship in non-gendered terms, has this living reminder of what she lost show up in a very difficult moment for both of them.
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Apr 29, 2024 00:04
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IMJack posted:For some reason I get this impression of Nukoku being Allison and Cio's daughter, rather than being a new incarnation of Cio. It would probably be much better for both of them if they approached it this way, but both Nukoku and Allison are currently talking about her as if she were Cio's living revenant.
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Apr 29, 2024 00:16
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nimby posted:I'm pretty sure that this is what is supposed to happen when a devil mask is wrecked. Yabalchoath didn't really return, didn't quite reincarnate into Cio just because of the new mask. There were hints and traces of the old in Cio, but it wasn't the same. The same can be true of Nukoku, it maybe isn't Cio but just operates on a retained obsession, the world-changing part is that she seemingly didn't require a mask to keep her form. Yeah, and I've always been banging on the drum that the masks and devil color systems something mortals came up with to control them. It's not their inherent nature, and it can be subverted and broken. So you don't need to memorize it. I mean, look, blue devils are supposed to be kinda weak, and Cio was strong as HELL.
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Apr 29, 2024 01:05
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The thing is, masks and the hierarchy are something humans came up with to control devils, but so is the entire idea of devils having a human-like conscious continuous identity.
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Apr 29, 2024 01:07
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Mask : Flame :: Bottle : Cola Pour some undifferentiated Coke into the bottle- now you have a specific bottle of cola. (and it's a fancy one with a name on it). Is it the bottle, or the cola, or both? Pour it out, smash the bottle, kintsuragi the bottle back together, pour some new cola in. Now you have something vaguely similar to the original bottle but different. Smash it again, except this time the cola itself somehow remembers the shape it took when it was in the bottle. Add in something new and flexible (worm) to act as a container for the shape the cola takes upon itself...
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Apr 29, 2024 01:33
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There's one thing about the whole continuity of Cio's identity that I don't get. Nukoku = New Coke Ciocie Cioelle = Coca-Cola Yabalchoath = ??????? How does Yabalchoath fit into the whole Coke pun naming scheme?
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Apr 29, 2024 02:53
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W.T. Fits posted:There's one thing about the whole continuity of Cio's identity that I don't get. Lol look at this nerd who's never had a glass of yabalchoath!
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Apr 29, 2024 03:09
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I'm going to assume it's coca tea.
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Apr 29, 2024 03:10
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How do you pronounce Yabalchoath, anyway?
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Apr 29, 2024 03:11
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W.T. Fits posted:There's one thing about the whole continuity of Cio's identity that I don't get.
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Apr 29, 2024 03:17
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I would have guessed some sort of accented vanilla coke if it had one more syllable.
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Apr 29, 2024 03:32
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Yaldaboath is one of the names given to the Gnostic Demiurge. It's clearly a variation on that, with more C. Ciocie Cioelle was not Yabalchoath, though she partially remembered being Yabalchoath. Yabalchoath did not have a cute soda name. Yabalchoath was a horror that Cio shuddered to think about.
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Apr 29, 2024 03:33
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