The Wicked + The Divine #39 - "Mothering Invention," Part 6

[laughing_tree]

To broadly paraphrase: “I understand how I felt as a teenager better when I was 36 than when I was 16.” I wouldn’t go that far—and, I stress, I paraphrase that, from memory—but if you don’t other your past and remember those emotions, you can write them. One good thing about getting older is that you can write from experience about more stages of human life. -- Kieron Gillen

Comments

[megaspork]

I feel bad asking this but anyone have any idea what's going on in this issue? I mean I understand the literal of what happened but does anyone have theories on what it means in a more abstract sense?

[lissa_quon]

I guess she "tapped out" on the god thing.Which - yea that's the obvious point.

Though I kept wondering of Anneke was finding the gods or just selecting dupes to be the gods. She said she "speeds up the process" I think in an earlier issue - so in theory without her the gods would happen naturally. So maybe she instead finds kids that fit her needs and makes them the gods.

Like the whole Odin/Mimir thing seemed premeditated and planned. It felt like she knew Mimir was on this gen's docket - but wanted one she could control so she found the kid and his dad and set THAT up.

So my guess is Laura's half way figured this bit out without realizing it. She keeps saying shes not a god and she "knew it" - so it seems shes rejected whatever power and title Anneke bestowed upon her. Though if there were naturally occuring Gods without Anneke's meddling - maybe Laura is one - just not the god/power Anneke said she was.

[doodleboy]

On the literal:

My guess is that Laura made an intuitive leap and realized the Recurrence is a story. Think Neil Gaiman's Dream of a Thousand cats, the recurrence is a ritual that everyone believes and has such a cultural impact that it warps reality.

But the Recurrence itself isn't a physical law of the universe. It's a story written by people.

Laura realized that the Recurrence is a story and at the end of the day a story is a lie. She can choose to not play her role, not be Persephone. And because the Recurrence is a story, theoretically any human being can write their own Recurrence story. And at the end of the issue instead of playing a role written by the Original Pantheon, she begins to create a story for herself. A story that can warp reality much like the original recurrence.

On what it means:

Well there’s a bunch of readings.

One is that Wicked and Divine is structured as a Greek tragedy. Where the fates (or Ananke in this case), control the lives of mortals and bring about their downfalls. In a Greek tragedy this happens because it was destined to happen, it’s the physical laws of the universe. But in WicDiv this is shown to be a lie. The fate of the gods, the two year rule, it’s all made up by people. And it serves the end of the person who controls the recurrence. There’s not greater divine purpose to those rules, no physical law of fate, just an old ghoul who wants to profit herself through the suffering of others. Somebody who managed to convince a bunch of children that they don’t deserve better.

You can make a lot of political analogies with this. Ananke is like a politician who proposes a bunch of policies that will cause a lot of suffering for her own profit. But to the public she’ll say the policies that she implement are necessary because it’s for the greater good.

So it's very much the idea of beware the people in power and the stories they tell. Their stories may be able to affect reality, but that doesn't mean they're not lying to you.

Another reading which amuses me a bit is the Recurrence being doing art for a corporation. Everyone fights for a spot in say…. Marvel and DC, it’s a difficult career to break into but it seems like the top of the industry. Working at Marvel is a big career boost in a competitive field, but at the end of the day as an artist you’re being exploited. Control of your artwork goes to people who ultimately don’t care about you or the artwork you make other then as a way to make money. But you don’t have to work for marvel to have a comics career, you can break out into Indie comics and own the work that you create. It’s a harder path since you’re not taking advantage of superheroes that have entered the public consciousness (like the Recurrence), but it’s ultimately the way to not have your work be a commodity for people who will abandon you as soon as you’re no use to them.

It’s a very meta-reading of the story (and honestly less useful to the reader), but Kieron Gillen isn’t really above doing meta-stuff like that. And Kieron did describe writing for marvel like this "it is a dream, but one that eats your soul'. And I value my soul.".