{"id":5068,"date":"2020-02-04T20:36:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T20:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5068"},"modified":"2020-02-04T20:36:46","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T20:36:46","slug":"fallen-angels-6-annotations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=5068","title":{"rendered":"Fallen Angels #6 annotations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 1 \/ COVER.<\/strong> The cast pose dramatically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 2-3.<\/strong> Recap and credits. This is just titled “Conclusion”, and it’s by Bryan Hill, Szymon Kudranski and Frank D’Armata. It’s the final issue of the series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 4.<\/strong> Psylocke has a moment of self-doubt before fighting Apoth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psylocke thinks that she’s some sort of avatar of death and that she’s playing the role of hero that was left behind for her by Betsy. The first panel seems to be purely symbolic. The second is probably meant to be Kwannon with the father of her child, given the similar panel on page 9 – though it’s hard to tell and the blank facial expressions don’t help much. The third is her abusive teacher. The remaining panels focus on her internal division, which is probably meant to be paralleled in Apoth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

PAGES 5-11.<\/strong> In Dubai, the Fallen Angels fight people under Apoth’s control, while Psylocke goes off to fight Apoth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Psylocke being the clear focal character of this series, it’s X-23 who takes the lead with the team, presumably because they know her better, and she’s more experienced at teamwork. Psylocke seems to see this as confirmation that she doesn’t quite fit in here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Psylocke uses telekinetic wings to fly up to reach Apoth (don’t ask me how that works), which goes back to the butterfly imagery that’s appeared throughout this series. We’re probably meant to take it that this is Psylocke transcending the voices in her head by rising to the occasion and confronting Apoth. Page 9 panel 2 seems to be another flashback to young Kwannon and the father of her child, a memory that she’s returning to as a focal point to resist her brainwashing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 12-20.<\/strong> Psylocke confronts Apoth using the device that Sinister gave her.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently the wraith figure that Cable encountered in previous issues is<\/em><\/span> Apoth, or at least one aspect of him. The “good” glowing figure that Psylocke encountered is the other side of him, or at least an adversary figure created by Apoth to fulfil his pseudo-mythological role. Ultimately, Apoth seems to adopt the form of Psylocke’s child for their psychic battle, and begs her to stop, though it’s ambiguous whether Apoth is genuinely trying to surrender (viewing Psylocke as his “mother”) or trying to psyche her out. Either way, Psylocke seemingly kills him, though a later scene indicates that Apoth is actually trapped within Sinister’s device. The “good” side of Apoth apparently just survives and presumably wanders off somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 21. <\/strong>Psylocke and X-23 talk on Krakoa.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

X-23 wants to keep the team together, but Psylocke doesn’t want to, since she realises that her only skill as a team leader would be to turn the team into broken people like her. This feels awfully like a last-minute change of plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 22. <\/strong>Psylocke delivers Apoth to Mr Sinister.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apoth has apparently survived as a prisoner within Sinister’s device, and Sinister decides to keep him. He’ll probably be significant in some future storyline relating to posthumanity and technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGE 23.<\/strong> Events have shown Psylocke that she can be a hero.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaks for itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 24-25.<\/strong> Data pages. The second is just Psylocke promising to make people butterflies like her, which (in the context of the series) is ambiguous about whether it means her as a broken figure, or her as the transcendent hero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first page is indeed an extended quotation from the Japanese Noh play “Atsumori”, written by Zeami Motokiyo (c1363-c1443). Hill seems to be using the English translated text found on this page<\/a>, which describes it as recounting a duel between two warriors, and “meditat[ing] on the dilemma between the violence of maintaining order and the senselessness often resulting from fatality.” The passage shown here is the climax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More precisely, “Atsumori” tells the story of Taira no Atsumori, an inexperienced teenage samurai who got himself killed by the older warrior Kamugai after being left behind at the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani in 1184. As I understand it, the basic tragedy is meant to be that although Atsumori was nominally a samurai, he was really just a callow poet who had no real business being on a battlefield in the first place, while Kamugai was so upset about killing a boy who reminded him of his own son that he quit fighting and became a monk. So it’s a story about senseless death resulting from fixed roles (and, in Kamugai’s case, the rejection of those roles).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This translation is by Royall Tyler (born 1936), and renders the Japanese into iambic pentameter. Unfortunately, the version which has been used here not only omits the stage directions, but also omits the markers that tell you who’s speaking, which makes it a bit confusing. “Atsumori” and “I” are the same character – the speech is meant to be shared between Atsumori’s ghost and the chorus. Also, the word “Kumagai” in the third last line shouldn’t be there – it seems to have been inserted into the source quote to explain who the word “Rensho” referred to. You can check that against other versions of the translation… or you could just notice that it messes up the iambic pentameter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAGES 26-27.<\/strong> The reading order and the trailers. Of course, there is<\/em> no next issue; the trailer page instead reads “NEXT: HELLIONS”, which presumably picks up on the Psylocke\/Sinister subplot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. PAGE 1 \/ COVER. The cast pose dramatically. PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. This is just titled “Conclusion”, and it’s by Bryan Hill, Szymon Kudranski and Frank D’Armata. It’s the final issue of the series. PAGE 4. Psylocke has a moment […]<\/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":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-annotations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068","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=5068"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5072,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5068\/revisions\/5072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}