Annotated 49-34
FB: Sure, sure, but when gods try to be QUIET about it all, you guys stop sacrificing us virgins and calves and start talking all fancy about “the clockwork universe” and then your philosophy professors start peppering us with gotcha questions like “Can you make a rock so heavy you can’t lift it, bro?” and our smiting fingers start to itch.
You can see the subtle clash in religious philosophy between me and Flo in the bonus jokes here…the FB promo, as usual, was mine, and the alt text, as usual, is Flo’s. But I’ve gotten into that already.
E-Merl will never be one of the ARKERRAN FIVE OF ULTIMATE DESTINY, but at least he scores a mention in their moments of greatest glory. Hey, it’s more than some of their other teammates got. [Cut to Bandit, seething]
At about this time, Flo signed us up as part of a story bundle with a handful of other webcomics: thanks go to Hiveworks’ social network for helping to put that together.
Hiveworks is basically a cesspool of dead comics, no contact to creators and promises unkept from what I’ve been able to gather. It’s weird to hear good things about it.
Huh? I, on the other hand, have heard mostly good things.
All I need to know is that Hiveworks includes Sleepless Domain. It needs no other reason to justify itself (though it also includes Cassiopeia Quinn and The Guilded Age [which is finishing an Annotated run]).
Hiveworks doesn’t seem to be particularly clogged with dead series – and the dead ones that are there seem more likely to be finished than abandoned (quick poke through the ones on the bar under the comics I regularly read on the Hiveworks network* pops up 2 apparently abandoned, a half dozen or so finished, and a bunch updated in the last week or 2).
* In addition to GA and Girls With Slingshots, both of which have ended but are in reruns (GWS just started its second rerun just to keep the comment section alive), it’s Dumbing of Age, El Goonish Shive, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Definitely not dead: Dumbing of Age, Wilde Life, Girl Genius, The Glass Scientists, and Paranatural. Those are just the ones that interest me. Of course you’re going to have series that end, say this one, which I am still rereading obviously, but there’s plenty extant. I’ll grant there are some that just stop producing instead of coming to an end. I know of Helvetica and Monster Kind, but they don’t define Hiveworks’ webcomics. And oops, Monster Kind did start up again at some point, though I don’t have an interest in picking it up again myself. If anything, the fact that Hiveworks keeps those around while having plenty of ongoing comics is more of a positive to me than a negative (in the hope that they do start up again, though I very much doubt it for Helvetica).
Also, that is not dead which can eternal lie.
I am extremely patient when it comes to the free ice cream.
I remember Gravedust being on top of Frigg at some point and she claiming he weights at SHITTON as I see Syr’Nj having a casual conversation with him holding with one arm, haha. Syr’Nj goes hard on branch day, bro.
Don’t forget the added force added by the jet pack she’s having to pull him against, Syr’Nj absolutely goes hard on branch day
Especially compared to Byron’s face while hanging on to Best with both arms. Maybe Byron is trying to pull up and Syr’Nj is not, but visually, it doesn’t look as if either of them is pulling any particularly tight turns, in any direction.
I’ll just assume that Syr’Nj, being the most prepared of all, has a piece of rope and a hook, attached to her jetpack, to whose other end Gravedust is connected, which is obscured by her arm in the picture, and she only uses her arm to keep Gravedust from swinging about.
Gravedust’s face, on the other hand … he seems to be enjoying it. But then I guess with that kind of facial hair, it’s really hard not to look funny in strong headwind.
I don’t find that “clash” particularly clashy, at least not as far as I can see it.
Gods need followers, that’s firmly established, i think. If they were able to do whatever they want on their own, they wouldn’t need them. In order to get them, they need theatrics, i.e. they need to impress everyone with how powerful and almighty they are. Looking more powerful and almighty than they actually is thus beneficial to them, hence being really good at theatrics is a big bonus. So big that it might outweigh any other form of Might, in most situations.
So, I read that god in your FB teaser as threatening people with Smiting, in order to keep them providing sacrifices and stuff, and I count that as “theatrics”. Sure, people might actually die, but it’s mostly for show. Because why would you have someone be struck by lighting when you could also have them die in an accident, from a stroke, in a fight, or bitten by a snake? Theatrics! It’s all about appearances.
Gods need followers, that’s firmly established, I think
See, I’m gonna stop you right there. Lots of fantasy/sci-fi works say that gods need followers… the classic Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” promoted that idea. I know some people really like the metaphor of gods that quietly die off once their followers stop believing in them, like they’re Puff the Magic Dragon or whatever. Once you get past the “theatrics” and the peer pressure, this results in gods that are ultimately hamstrung…hell, if they can’t do anything without our belief in them, then that makes us the real gods here, now doesn’t it? And Flo might say, “Exactly,” and she might even say that that’s what this concluding battle is about.
But I’ve never really bought into the idea, for one simple reason: gods predate worshippers. If Zeus needed the prayers of a bunch of Greeks to keep him powerful enough to influence the Trojan War, then what the heck was he feeding on back when it was just him, Rhea, Cronos, the other Titans, and his five devoured siblings? What about the stories where the gods created the world, were they getting prayer-energy from the ylem? The farthest I can compromise with this idea is that prayer is one hella addictive source of self-esteem, and some gods, the showboaty kind, will ham it up to keep getting that love. But I don’t think that not getting worship would make them fade away, I think it’d just make them act like dicks. (More like dicks, in some cases.)
To some extent, I think this depends on your upbringing. If you’re trying to kick free of a lot of religious brainwashing or shrug off the influence of a gaslighting ex, then you may like the idea of a scary-seeming god who’d be revealed as a big nothing if enough people turned their backs on him. It’s kind of an obvious metaphor, but it could be a resonant one for that audience. I’m not part of that audience, though, and for me, such a god is about as interesting as a villain whose secret weakness is being opposed by heroes.
A later Star Trek story is more relevant to this one, for me…the bit in Star Trek V where Kirk cross-examines a pretender to godhood: “What does God need with a starship?”
I’m going to say that shamans predate worshippers, if only very slightly, and charismatic shamans create gods. As a really neat way to gain power, adulation and hot-and-cold running virgins of their preferred gender.
In a lot of ways, politics, most overtly American politics, but elsewhere too, is trying to wind back the clock and revert representational democracy to religion.