3370 Past The Point Of No Return
So help me if any of you make any ‘Phantom of the Opera’ references….
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So help me if any of you make any ‘Phantom of the Opera’ references….
Will you give us cookies if we make ‘Phantom of the Opera’ references?
*gives you cookies* just for asking.
I admit, I know little of the Phantom, but, I will say that Power Corrupts.
An old chestnut, I know, but, still…
Also, that those who question our current day levels of freedom and agency, be reminded that, in other worlds and places and times Speaking Truth To Power™ could get you thrown off a cliff!
Speaking gravity to truth. 🙁
Uhhh … hmmm … “Floating, falling, sweet intoxication. Touch me, trust me, savor each sensation. Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in to the power of the music of the night.” ? 🙂
*gives you cookies* nice!
You know, it’s not ALW I’m hearing. It’s images from Oldfield’s "Moonlight Shadow," a song sung from the perspective of an outsider to a battle she can’t fight for, or with, or even on behalf of, another.
I stay, I pray, indeed.
Yeah, that seems more appropriate
And thus ends the era of ‘…everyone survived…’
Has ended
Panel two: "If I flap my arms fast enough, will I fly?"
Alternately: "I can see my old home from here!"
So she’s slipped over from Chaotic Neutral full into Chaotic Evil, & it’ll only get worse for everybody from here on.
Okay, how about "Les Miserables"?
"Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry Rann…"
Brilliant! 😀
Thank you, and bravo again to mucat for picking up the line and making an excellent song from it.
"Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry Rann?
It is the music of a people
Who will keep the slaves we win.
When the bleating of Ch’Thier
Echoes the crumbling of their walls
There is much they’ll learn to fear
When the long night falls.
"Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and be Her tool?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to rule?
Then join in Her fight
And establish our might o’er the fools!
Will you take all you can take
So that our banner may advance?
Some She will praise and some forsake
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of Ch’Thierians
Will water the fields where we dance!
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry Rann?
It is the music of a people
Who will keep the slaves we win!
When the bleating of Ch’Thier
Echoes the crumbling of their walls
There is much they’ll learn to fear
When the long night falls!
Should have included a link to the original, and probably an apology for my twisted version. Love to Hong Kong, Thailand, Minneapolis, and everyone else still in the fight!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p5jL7M325U
Now maybe Ch’Thier doing a version of "Castle on a Cloud?"
Oh man, that’s a tough one. Set it during Ch’Thier’s time in the Worm Pit, and you’ve got obvious parallels…and the "Castle on a Cloud" itself is right on the nose.
But Ch’Thier is a hundred thousand times older than Cosette, and would long for and fear very different things. Let’s give it a try:
[Ch’Thier:]
"There is a castle on a cloud
If I were there I’d yet spread hope.
No maddening worms to drown and grope
Not in my castle on a cloud.
"There in a room that’s full of light
I’d hear and answer every prayer,
Not one abandoned to the night
Not from my castle on a cloud.
"There is a lady all in white;
I must recall her lullaby.
Her voice is soft and her words are wise:
"Ch’Thier, you’ve forgotten far to much."
"I know a place where no one’s lost
Where no one cries for me in vain
No worms to drown their prayers in pain
Not in my castle on a cloud.
"Oh, help! I think I hear her now
And I’m nowhere near ready to face her
No way to reach her I don’t have the words
It’s her!
It’s Ranna!
[Ranna]:
"Now look who’s here, the little angel herself
Pretending once again she’s so awfully good;
Better not let me catch you hoping
Better not catch my eye.
Small shattered minds your worshippers lend me
What is that going to buy?
Now, take my power, my sad broken toys
And go and find me others where they hide!
"I should never had taken them in, in the first place
How stupid the things that we do.
Like sister, like followers, the small and the weak…
"Ah, Sahar! Come my dear, Sahar, let me see you;
You look very well in that fine crown of snakes.
There’s some little mortals know how to behave
And they know what to wear
And I’m saying: thank Me for that.
"Still there, Ch’Thier? Your tears will do her no good;
Now she will fetch her friends from where they cower.
[Ch’Thier]:
"Please do not leave them out alone
Not in the darkness on their own
[Ranna]:
"Enough of that, or they’ll forget I’ve been nice.
She heard me ask for something, and I never ask twice."
*pushes Ch’Their back under, alone with the worms and her thoughts*
Bravo! mucat that was excellent!
And the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle on your snout
They eat your eyes, they eat your noes
They eat the jelly between your toes
A big green worm with rolling eyes
Crawls in your stomach and out your eyes
Your stomach turns a slimy green
And puss comes out like whipping cream
The Hearse Song
cookies for everybody!!!
Ah… here we go with the Ranna we know and hate, and a nice counterpart to Ch’thier’s own flawed development. Although I’d personally disagree with Marion, as killing dissenters is itself a point of no return and a warning of future atrocities. It’s hard to believe that Ranna was not at the very least aware of such murders happening, even if she wasn’t ordering them herself, and if anyone could command her followers to do or not do something, she’s about the only one they seem to listen to. Although I suppose if they represent her "doubt" in whatever consensus results in gods, exiling or killing even a few would have something of a domino or snowball effect on the progression of the whole? I’m honestly curious, are Ranna and Ch’Thier more vulnerable to paradigm shifts in belief because they were born divine? As opposed to the older gods, who were mortal originally and had time to get used to the powers? Marion is mostly sensible, and even Lolth would do bizarrely mundane things like drink beverages in Arachne’s house.
Also, it is kind of a nice callback of sorts to Joan Half-Orc… who now that I type this, did end up with one bizarre, not-so-little cult to her name who worshiped her as an avatar of vengeance (without really thinking through the consequences). I know Joan was empowered by Grummsh to unify orcs and humans under his banner, but Joan’s incredible resilience and unnatural combat prowess vastly outstrips her fellow half-human/half-orc "chosen" of Grummsh (at least, that I can remember) in ways that Grummsh clearly did not expect. I wonder if this was intentional foreshadowing for what happened to Ranna/Ch’Thier? Or am I barking up the wrong wolfhound?
Joan, yeah! Another perfect example of someone who becomes a beacon for people, who claim to follow faithfully yet instead insist on her satisfying whatever inner demons they may have.
I’m with Marion on where the switch was flipped. Ranna’s anger came from a sense of betrayal, that her peers or community didn’t uphold their end of the compact. In that sense, anyone suggesting return and compromise would be similarly a betrayer, so the cliff-toss – while extreme! – makes ‘sense.’
But panel five leads us to conquest, which is not a reaction to betrayal, but an unambiguous instigation, an attack upon strangers. Capturing and razing a settlement is the moment she went from wounded & lashing out to a predator.
t!
> Capturing and razing a settlement is the moment she went from wounded & lashing out to a predator.
Indeed. The decision not to want *no one* to wear the mantle of cruelty, but rather, to be the one wearing it.
I almost used the word ‘cruelty,’ but decided it was too close to questions of Good and Evil.
Do you draw a clear distinction that makes cruelty not evil?
t!
I would call cruelty a specific subcategory of evil. (Where, in turn, ‘evil’ keeps its lower-case ‘e’, and means ‘bad stuff people do’ rather than ‘a Cosmic Force that Ranna thinks she embodies.’)
Cruelty means understanding what would hurt a person most, and doing THAT SPECIFIC THING to them in preference to other things that might have accomplished your same goals. Which is an evil thing to do in almost every case, but the words aren’t strict synonyms.
A person can be ruthlessly, pragmatically evil without being cruel — "I crushed them because they were in my way, not because I cared about making them suffer" — and I suppose one could be carefully, surgically cruel without being evil. (For example, if by reminding your enemy of that lost love that haunts them to this day, you could goad them into a mistake and take them down with far less bloodshed on both sides.)
I find it very difficult to draw a distinction between cruelty and low-e evil, because I feel cruelty includes a facet of *enjoyment* of the victim’s pain – actually, that it’s the primary intent.
If we were to attempt to define an absolute that might qualify as upper-E Evil, cruelty would be closer (an intent) than, say torture (an action), because action without context is arguably neutral, but when discussing higher ideals, context counts.
Cruelty is not *useful*. Slavery (for example), whatever else it might be, at least makes sense from the viewpoint of pragmatism.
For these reasons, the example you provided I would not call cruelty. It’s manipulation, but goal-directed. One can goad without enjoying it, and as I’ve argued above, I think enjoyment is an essential part of what constitutes cruelty.
t!
Fair enough. Seems we’re just using the words slightly differently — emphasis on techniques vs. emphasis on motives.
In any case, what the Rannites did in panel 2 was both evil AND cruel. Poor lady had to spend that brief flight knowing not only that she was about to die, but that the people who meant the most to her, and for whom she had given up all ties to her prior life, were casting her out in contempt.
It might be true that Ranna herself wasn’t yet past the point of no return — a sufficiently heartfelt "By the g…well, by me…WHAT HAVE I DONE?" might still have carried some weight, and opened a narrow and difficult path back — but she was hurtling that way fast.
What I specifically meant by "the mantle of cruelty," in this context, was responding to the notion of injustice by desiring to become the abuser. Ranna is aware of the injustice visited upon her, but her response to it appears to be "I want to be the person who need not be obliged to treat differing voices with respect." Identification with the abuser, and desire for the freedoms that being an abuser grants to one, as a way of coping with the pain of having been the abused…this is what I mean, here.
How to separate this from "evil?" I think cruelty *is* evil, but I think that people become vehicles of cruelty visited upon others for a host of reasons, and that the distinction between the person as a being, and the person’s actions (with respect to both intent and impact) are interesting and significant, here. I may be even more sympathetic to Ranna specifically, in that abuse and marginalization have an impact upon a person, and her ideas about the viability of patience and goodwill in negotiation were surely not formed in a vacuum. This said, I don’t think any of these observations lessen the cruelty of her deeds, or even the intentions informing her deeds.
I suspect — and I freely admit, I’m just speculating here — that Ranna’s enjoyment of inflicting suffering, at this point, may simply be in the powerful, secure feeling that comes from being the hand that chooses who suffers. She may be enjoying the pain she’s causing, but I suspect, at this point, that a key part of it is a very sick, very warped, very abused-becomes-abuser sense of "cruelty happens, this is just how it is, and it’s empowering to see that I’ve built a life in which I’m not the one suffering from the reality of it."
Is this "enjoyment of victim’s pain?" Perhaps, and I’m not here to argue that it isn’t…merely that it broadens the idea of what constitutes "enjoying the victim’s pain." I think merely enjoying not being the victim, enjoying being in a position of control in which one feels able to escape from being the victim, counts as part of cruelty, even if it’s a passive, apathetic expression of cruelty.
But I ramble, forgive me.
> forgive me.
Like hell. Your ‘rambling’ is what we look forward to.
t!
Interesting, she seems to be getting a little taller, a little larger… I wonder if their physical forms grew along with the numbers of their followers?
I guess when you live indefinitely then the consequences of your actions build indefinitely.
Ah, the effect of a centuries-long feedback loop building to critical mass.
I think what we all need to remember is that we are hearing this from a woman who is *millions* of years old. What may look like a quick succession of events is possibly decades, if not centuries between panels. Mama Falahn probably still had a long life even after accepting mortality, and we already saw how old she was when Ranna and her disciples left.
I think the only out for the two now, really, is to pull a V’Ger-like ascension. Or like the Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5, with Marion taking the role of Lorien. Of if you are of a literary bent and know the Culture novels, call it sublimination.
You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,2505
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.
My English lit major heart loves all this.
I can’t make the cheesy NuShooz lyric drop I was going to now. It would wreck the mood, and is totally inappropriate.
Sorry, i really only see the film versión with Burt lancaster and the last musical film.
I suspect there are a reference i’m loosing.
I know the musical, yes. But like you know the lord of the rings with wikipedia and Peter Jackson’s films
Ah, the old standby, someone did me wrong, so I’ll do them wrong in response, and they will do wrong to me in response, and then I’ll do wrong to them in response…
Soon there is more than enough wrong to go around, but all anybody remembers is how THEY were wronged, not what they themselves did.
And of course as THEY are the wronged parties here, anything they do is ‘justice’, no matter how horrible it may be, while the other side are the criminals.
Always funny how both sides think exactly the same thing…
And sure, maybe I was the first one wronged, but did I really need to retaliate, or more likely, escalate? And in the real world were it has been going on for centuries, there is no way of knowing "who started it" especially as by this point there has been enough wrong on both sides to more than make "who started it" utterly irrelevant.
No, the only question that matters at that point is who is going to stop it?
Mathematics to the rescue once again!
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-10-24
"…feelings of betrayal and resentment that were amplified by the similar feelings of her followers."
I also wonder if the sentiments being spread by Ch’Thier’s priests and fostered by -her- followers is also contributing to the ‘steering current’ that’s propelling Ranna (and thus, her people) into these straits.