Whore of Blood Shrine

When I finished watching the backlog of Helluva Boss episodes, my first thought was that it was a total bummer. The idea of a modern reinterpritation of the divine comedy being a setting for some charecter driven fun far exceedes the exection, and I was ultimately left a bit bummed out by the whole thing. Because like, we seem to be barreling toward a real reckoning between the folks who fear god and gender idiology in equal proportion, and a serious consideration of biblical theology with a queer perspective seems like a good thing to try, and what better medium to try it through then independent internet animation?

A blog, apparently. If I had to speculate, the animated serieses got locked into needing to appeal to too broad an audience (on both sides of the market) to get philisophical, and had to cut a lot of interesting woldbuilding for bugetary reasons. [FN: This all assumes there is not some huge lore book aout there that does all of these things, which I have not checked because I don't really care, because if I didnt notice it in the work its not part of the work.] This all to say I really really like the Whore of Blood stories, and would like to pay tribute to them and thier world.

However, I don't have the time or steady hand to draw anything really good, nor the paitence to put together an aestetically interesting webpage, and anyway my intrest with the story is mostly conceptual, not visual. However, my inability to write interesting dialouge makes most of these ideas unadaptable to a narrative, and they are too boring to stand on the SCP website without narritivisation. So, imma just stack them up here, call it a shrine, and go to bed.

I also want to make clear that this is by no means what I think these stories ought to be, just what they could be and it would be neat. I am interested in WoB for the world and theology, but the driving force of the stories are the charecters, and they are more important then any philisophical bullshit I can cook up.

A one paragraph one: I read in a French book [1] that "Political sovereignty, or domination, has two heads: the magician-king and the jurist-priest ... Romulus and Numa, Varuna and Mitra, the despot and the legislator, the binder and the organizer." This framework could apply to the heavan/hell dichotomy we see in WoB: heaven is the domain of jurist-priests, writing laws that dictates the future of all and administering them with a cold dispassion. They raise an organized army [2] and demand structured, regular observances of this heavenly law. Meanwhile, hell is full of fearsome despots pulling off magic tricks, with no developed rule of law but a system of contracts that binds the people no less tightly then heaven's legal edicts. The important thing here is that both of these aspects are two poles of the same thing, and they both serve to opress the people caught in the system. YWHY may have two heads, but both rest on the shoulders of an asshole. [3][4]

  1. A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari, pg. 351. Note that the quote only applies to Indo-european mythology, which WoB operates entirely within, and that IMO this entire framework is only usefull for analys of myth, not political reality.
  2. I totally don't believe D+G's idea that the war machine is extierior to the state in a meaningfull way. Nomads mostly want to be left alone, and thier impressive historical conquests are a product of a militarily efficent group being rapidly organized under a full state that goes to fuck up other states, not some nomadic special orginization that gets wedged into the state organism.
  3. Weather or not you believe my critique of D&G in fn 2, it is clear that the implied externality that has a totally different point of view and could really shake the shit is the SCP foundation. Cotract some 3 moons people for the arcana, strap on some paratech and try to slap some Gods around isn't really WoB's foundation's m.o., but it very well could be. totally out of step with the second chances thing though.
  4. I think there is more footnote in this one then text. At this rate imma be the next DFW. If only I could actually write like him.

Whore of Death: a (unfinished dont read this bit yet) Theory

Fuckhead is probably my favorite of the stories so far, for all of the reasons you would expect. I would like to start this bit of speculation on the future of these charecters by saying that some part of me really hopes that none of my predictions come to pass and they are just let stand as they are. This would be a horribly twisted and nhilistic thing to do, but it would conform with Fruit Cake's "life sucks then you die" mentality. A part of me [FN: specifically, the "life sucks then you die" part] really likes this message, and would applaud the courage it takes to write a bona fide tragedy

But alas, the whole rest of the story is overtly comedic, the Whore of Death is too good of a side villan, Fruity's amphetamine addiction is too intresting a foil to Adrian's loose definition of sobriety, and the illustrator just got good at drawing the new folks. The narrativistic potential is too strong, and it is highly probable we get a continuation on these charecters. And thank Jesus! I need another nhilistic dead-end sufferfest like I need another hole in my head.

Heres how I think itll go: the clear coflict is between the two whores, but the story is too well written to just have Primrose pull up and save everybody, and we are looking down the barrel of some heavy karmic load between Fruity & co. and Malphas, so the broad strokes is a team-up with a b-charecter on Prim's team (Adrian or the wife probably) and a take over of Duchess' holdings, including the title of Whore of Death. The rest of this post is speculation about what that title means.

Our main clue comes from when Katz asks Prim directly what the title means.

"Well," Primrose began. "A `Whore` in Hell would be something akin to a sort of royal `Renaissance Person,` a multi-talented individual at the service and betterment of others. The ‘Blood’ part of the title means by sword, pen, or bonds.”

“Bonds? As in money?[FN: Not to get lost in the chartilist sauce, but yes but no.]”

“Well, yes, sometimes, but no.”
From what we see, you have to take a pretty loose view of "service and betterment of others" to consider Malphas a legitimate whore, which will no doubt play into the eventual shakedown. The more interesting question is what the "of death" means. I posit that as "blood" means with forming relationships between people [FN: Through kin, with Prim's relation with her mother and half-brother, found kin as with Adrian and the wife (I will exclusively refer to her as that untill we get her story and I read her name enough to remember it), and through the contracts as selaed with blood.], death is intrested in their dustruction. Death is not just the ultimate end, but the final escape, the king-hell shitshow where the oppressed can either cut loose and run or put a bullet in the forehead ot their contrary, ending all potential of argument or resolution. Nothing will be the same ever again, rising out of the ether and slipping back faster then you can blink.

But thats just like, my oppinion man. I will finish by saying that I suspect other whores include the Whore of Iron, who works through tools and architecture and more broadly the concept of design as the architecture hipsters use it, the whore of textile (garb? cloth?) who operates through layers of fabric, masks, and deciet, and the whore of milk who operates through the hirearchical, caring and feudal bonds between mother and child, with perhaps some birth stuff thrown in there. Obviously more metaphysically interesting then actually good charecters (except for the textile one, thats probably the strongest of the 3) but yaknow.

Writing a story about a gay workaholic academic getting pulled into a whirlwind sadomasochistic relationship at the age of like 40 is a cruel and unusual personal attack about which nothing will be done.