I was just musing how I love the design of 001, and her relation to Mammon. Both the visual, and what's implied by hot they interact.

Abbadon doesn't go into ALL of it, but if you know anything about Christian and Gnostic mythology and art, you can read between the lines and see what he's referencing and constructing.

Mammon is clearly the biggest "Christian Mythology"-influenced demiurge in this book. (I suppose Solomon David is too--Solomon was said to have had a child with the Queen of Sheba who is sometimes seen as African/Ethiopian, thus probably why Solomon David is black too in this comic.)

Back to Mammon.

Obviously, the idea of Mammon in Christianity is greed, wealth. Sometimes said to be the devil himself, other times just one of his demons.

But the devil/evil/etc. is often represented in historical Christian art as a dragon. (Abbadon is drawing on his art history knowledge here, which he also does with some of the scenes with White Chain, who strikes several poses seen in religious angel art from history.)

But, again, dragons in non-religious fantasy mythos are also thought to hoard wealth--and so you circle back around to the idea of this great evil dragon who is simply so greedy and ambitious for adding wealth to his hoard that it does great harm.

But the cool thing here is 001 and her relationship to Mammon. Looking at her design, it's heavily inspired by Marian art. That is to say, 001 is quietly implied to be Mary...who is mother of Jesus, right?

Well--look at Mammon's forces. ZOMBIES. And you could make good argument that Jesus, rising from the dead, is CLEARLY a zombie, yeah? And here we are, with Mammon's zombie forces? And his emissary is basically Mary?

So it's quietly implied that Zombie Jesus exists in this universe. 001 might even be his mom. It's just that Allison simply didn't meet him.

And 001 is wearing a chastity belt--in the comic it's visually played as Bondage Nun, but it's also probably a reference to Mary giving virgin birth to Jesus.

(And if 001 has had a child with Mammon--yeah, you'd have to have some magical fuckery going on to even accomplish it...heh...and that could very well leave 001 technically a virgin.)

(...I wonder what a half-human/half-dragon would look in this world?) (Would he have inherited Mammon's immortality?)

Anyway, back to 001. So, in my head I've taken to calling her "Mary-Sophia". Why? Because in Gnosticism (which is a bunch of early Christian-adjacent sects that got stomped out), there's this idea that the demiurge is the corrupted son of Sophia, who is knowledge.

And we see 001 here acting as the wiser caretaker who is trying to shield her mentally febrile charge, Mammon, from the horrible world. And while that sort of conflicts with the idea that 001 is Mary, you could easily hand-wave it away that the two facets of 001 got separated into two different myths (esp. since Allison's world is not conquered so what knowledge that comes to it must be riddled with fiction), or that someone maybe said somewhere that 001 "mothers" the demiurge, and that turned into a myth of her being his real mother instead of his caretaker.

The whole idea in Gnosticism is that the demiurge is corrupted by the physical world and doesn't have knowledge/wisdom to be divine. Sophia has wisdom, but the demiurge (her son) does not.

In the comic it's played as 001 (probably) doing things behind Mammon's back because he is going senile.

So yeah. 001's influences are half Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and one half Sophia, mother of the demiurge. It's a really cool usage of both myths--I honestly love how Abbadon took those things and twined them together in a way that made sense.

Anyway. If you guys like 001, I heavily recommend looking up wikipedia articles on Gnosticism and related subjects, and Sophia, along with the article on Marian religious art.

So you might want to read my other thread on White Chain: https://lemmy.world/post/3610133 . That kicked off some of my musings below.

(I'm not saying I'm right about any of this, I just think some dots are starting to connect.)

Anyway, when I was musing about White Chain having kids and who the dad might be, I had a thought my inner fanfic writer LOVES...but which I think a certain segment of KSBD fandom might hate...

Still, maybe hear me out.

Very early on, Vladok flips gender from a male ebon devil to a female blue devil. And it's been kind of broadcast that Princess and Vigilant Gaze REALLY hit it off, and I suspect the gold-masked devil on the cover is actually a merge of Princess and Vigilant Gaze, because the profile looks like Princess's Hair Metal Aerobics Instructor getup, but has angel-stone-colored skin and Vigilant Gaze's blue-green eyes. I think they took a page from Aspected Chaos and realized angels and devils could merge.

So, devils flipping gender is established in canon, Princess does it pretty thoroughly and is becoming someone very different from Vladok.

So, back to Cio. The most recent pages show what seems to be an unmasked light-colored devil that has a fairly masculine outline.

And, although Allison's on-page romance is with the femme fatale that is Cio, it's not shown that Allison is repulsed by men. She seems to care for Zaid a lot. And, interestingly, Incubus comes to her as a male resembling David Bowie as the Goblin King from Labyrinth. There's a certain sort of girl-geek who absolutely crushed on David Bowie like that, and if Incubus is reading dreams, coming to Allison as a male instead of as a hot girl might have been the right choice after all, despite the Cio romance.

So from in-universe clues, Allison might actually be bisexual or pan, not lesbian. Given Allison's whole "thing" is constantly reinventing herself, being rather fluid with who/what she prefers wouldn't be out of line with the development shown.

Cio, in the tongue-lighting-match scene lies to Allison by saying that people NEVER change. Cio clearly longs to change and is terrified that she CAN'T...which is not helped by Allison abusing her and forcing her to be what she used to be and didn't really want to be anymore. But it's a lie that one can't change--I mean, we see an ANGEL change. Certainly Cio can too.

Growth, for Cio, would be completely reinventing herself, probably as a maskless devil because masks and names are assigned by humans (I also suspect Himself is a maskless devil), and Cio "returning" as a MALE might actually be what she needs to do a complete reinvention.

Of course, it would make the part of fandom that is completely horny for she-Cio lose its mind if we got he-Cio instead, but it would still work as the romance for Allison...

...plus, if we want to get REALLY out there, and take Cio's horny comment to White Chain about "yes, please arrest me officer" (paraphrased) as a genuine flicker of interest, a male Cio could have kids with White Chain, which might be relevant if one is trying to create a myth of a type of human that has both angel and devil in them. Maybe they do this after Allison kicks the bucket, make a human baby in White Chain's Soloman-derived human body that has both the white and black soul flame in it. (A Strong Grey flame? Strong Silver flame? A baby human Yisun? It's funny there's no in-universe examples of the white and black flames reuniting...)

ANYWAY. My whole point here is to say that I think Cio is probably returning, but it's quite possibly going to be in a really, really different form, because what Cio desperately needs to learn is that she CAN reinvent herself. And if she does so, it might not be beyond the pale that she comes back as a maskless male devil instead, and Allison has to learn to love and accept the new Cio instead of bullying her into being someone she no longer wants to be just because it's useful to Allison in a given moment.

...also, far-end-book thoughts, but if Cio does/can come back as a maskless devil, she'd make a good replacement for Himself, much as White Chain might be able to replace Metatron with her new type of human angels. 2 Michael and Metatron and Juggernaut are all painfully world-weary, and might eventually jump at a chance to be born as a reincarnating human with an angel soul instead of a reincarnating angel. Shorter life-cycles, leading to less boredom and burnout. There's a reoccurring theme in the series that the longer you live (esp. unchanging), the more fucked-up you get, and Metatron has NEVER died and 2 Michael only died once. The people who die--Zoss--or change (Solomon David, and Allison) are seen as being Royalty, or closer to Royalty.

https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/seeker-of-thrones-6-67/

So if 2 Michael is head of the Root Knights, and Metatron the Thorn Knights (and both consider themselves "royalists", devoted to the wheel continuing to turn under the hand of a King, unchanging)...

...and White Chain is something new, a human angel...

Who's in charge of the Petal Knights, like the one on this page? Are they just all anarchists and free spirits, doing what they please?

(And if White Chain is now human, and can do human things like eat and get drunk...can she have kids?)

(I mean...forgive me, is she a "Fruit Knight"? I mean, we have roots, thorns, and petals. And from petals and flowers come fruit, which is the seed of procreation to create a new tree...)

And if White Chain had kids, spreading the white flame, presumably with a human that has the dark flame, will she be mother of a new generation of minor Gods and Goddesses? Or at least powerful vatra? Would the kids have mixed black/white flames, like smaller lopsided Yisuns? I say lopsided because humans are only warm black not hot black, while angels are cold white not cool white. So the offspring would be slightly more weighted towards order than default humans?

Will White Chain be like Metia, founder of a new race of beings? (Could she have a virgin birth, spontaneously becoming pregnant, and breaking her white flame into smaller pieces, because her flame is still white and still immortal and thus indestructible?)

There was foreshadowing early on in the story right around when White Chain ripped her face off, with the angels asking if she wanted to be a "human angel", living, breeding, then dying. Well, she's certainly become human at this point, so perhaps the rest of the foreshadowing will follow? Kids, then death?

I find White Chain's story to be interesting because in Christian/Jewish mythology, at one point in the Old Testament angels did come to the "world of man" and "laid with women" and had half-angel offspring (which supposedly caused some of the problems that led to the flood).

But also, there's this idea in popular culture that dead humans "become angels" and go to heaven. I don't actually think the bible says humans become angels, they're pretty distinctly two different categories of beings, and the only remotely "human" angels were the human-angel hybrids completely wiped out by Noah's flood...but it sure is part of the popular non-canonical myth, that dead humans become angels.

If White Chain is the mother of half-angel humans, those humans might very well return to the void as angels upon death. And perhaps instead of being reborn like the angels currently do, they simply get reborn as humans instead? And if that trait spreads through ALL humans then ALL humans gain a bit of immortal flame and kind of gives rise, also, to the human reincarnation myths in other human religions?

White Chain's "existence" as a human angel provides a route to satisfy all those myths, to align this series' internal mythology with "real world" mythology.

I do wonder, given being human was foreshadowed in KSBD (and immediately paired with "having kids and dying"), WHOM she might have kids with. She is not obviously "paired" with anyone romantically besides from maybe Allison if you consider White Chain tsundre about any attraction she might feel. (There is a scene where Allison being really cute and happy flusters White Chain.) (Or would Abbadon make White Chain get married and have kids off-screen?)

OH. I wonder if this is how angels get behind what Allison might be doing?

An angel constantly reincarnating in human bodies both continues their cycles of immortal rebirths, while making them more interested in what's going on in the human world, since they will walk in it personally. So I wonder if this will align angels with Allison's plan to destroy the wheel?