{"id":4942,"date":"2019-12-22T16:56:16","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4942"},"modified":"2019-12-22T16:56:16","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T16:56:16","slug":"fallen-angels-4-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=4942","title":{"rendered":"Fallen Angels #4 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are by the digital edition. And to be honest, there’s not all that much to say about this issue, annotations-wise…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

COVER\/PAGE 1.<\/strong> X-23 and Cable on the run from… some sort of weird shadowy things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 2.<\/strong> Flashback. Young Kwannon is shown a dying man who was poisoned while trying to broker peace.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moral, presumably, being “nice guys finish last.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 3-6.<\/strong> Psylocke and X-23 discuss what to do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reasonably enough, X-23 has concluded that the whole scenario is being engineered by Apoth to lure Psylocke\/Kwannon in, and that this means Psylocke shouldn’t trust the vision that she had in issue #1. For some reason X-23 suggests asking the other <\/em>Psylocke for help, though it’s not clear what Betsy could really contribute, and it feels more like an excuse to raise her name so that Psylocke\/Kwannon can reject her again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

We still don’t know who was responsible for Psylocke’s vision in issue #1, but it both described Apoth as a god (consistent with Apoth’s self-image), and also compared itself to God (saying that Psylocke should follow its directions in the same way that Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son). That voice directed Psylocke to kill Apoth, and gave a reasonably accurate explanation of Apoth’s agenda (“by peace shall he unite all and destroy many”). An obvious reading is that the voice was a self-destructive aspect of Apoth himself, or maybe just Apoth lying to Psylocke to draw her in. Apoth has certainly acted inconsistently throughout this series – we’re told repeatedly in this issue that he regards Psylocke as his mother, but in issue #1 he told her to go back to her “exile” on Krakoa and “leave me to my peace.” In issue #3, he also said that he “keep[s] leading her to me”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I am being led. But so is all of Krakoa.”<\/strong> Psylocke believes that the Krakoan society is all being manipulated by Xavier, and she’s probably right. She says that Krakoa has given everyone their freedom at the cost of removing their will – presumably she means their motivation to set their own direction, rather than literally suggesting that mind control is involved. At any rate, Psylocke either isn’t bothered by the thought of being led, or decides that following the trail is the best way of bringing matters to a head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 7-8.<\/strong> Credits and recap. This is “Shikatsu” by Bryan Hill and Szymon Kuranski. The title means “life and death”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 9-11.<\/strong> The wraith thingie talks to Cable.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His speech hits the post-humanity themes that are now familiar in the Hickman era. He has a weird religious worldview which involves humans being abandoned by the “god of humanity”, which is replaced first by mutants and latterly by post-humanity. He wants Cable to deliver a message to Psylocke that Apoth is her child, and wants her love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-23.<\/strong> Psylocke confronts Apoth, and Apoth reveals his origin.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apoth basically backs up the claim that it regards Psylocke as its mother, and that it wants Psylocke’s love and attention. Apoth takes Psylocke’s hand and we get a weird energy effect leading into…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flashback to Apoth’s origins. <\/strong>Young Kwannon was sent to destroy the newly-created Apoth, which is implies to be some sort of recently-activated AI. Apoth persuades Kwannon not to kill it, though we don’t hear what it said. Apoth regards Kwannon as giving it life – hence the mother stuff – and then grows over the years until it finally escapes into the wider internet. At that point it reads the Bible and decides that it is god. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gist seems to be that Apoth is a childlike AI that both yearns for Psylocke as a pseudo-mother and believes itself to be a God who will bring about a single global consciousness, ostensibly to create peace, but mainly because he’s lonely. Apoth seems to promise that he will seize a city as his next step, but lets the remaining kids go because he’s so happy that Psylocke listened to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re not told why<\/em> Kwannon was sent to destroy Apoth, but given how Apoth turned out, it may not have been the worst idea in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the scene, Psylocke has some sort of vision of a glowing figure that X-23 apparently can’t see or hear. It’s not immediately recognisable, but the glowing effect is similar to the one used for Apoth’s AI cube in its origin flashback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 24-25.<\/strong> Data pages containing a transcript of an interview with Dr Nakamoto, an AI scientist. Nakamoto appears to have created an AI which is intended to automate lots of things in order to remove inefficient human intervention. He’s a massive techno-optimist and rejects the idea that he’s creating anything godlike or dangerous. The implication seems to be that this is the project that created Apoth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> Reading order and trailers. The Krakoan reads NEXT: PUPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers are by the digital edition. And to be honest, there’s not all that much to say about this issue, annotations-wise… COVER\/PAGE 1. X-23 and Cable on the run from… some sort of weird shadowy things. PAGE 2. Flashback. Young Kwannon is shown a dying man who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4951,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4942\/revisions\/4951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}