Phantomarine - with spoilers

[Jitter]

This thread is for discussion about Phatomarine https://www.phantomarine.com/comic/01-the-horizon-line

There can and will be spoilers up to any then-current page, so read at own risk!

[Jitter]

Now, just what is it with Hallie? On rather, in Hallie? Is it Cheline, Shoshana, or someone (or something) else entirely? It’s certainly not a benevolent goddess, if it one.

That side profile of her on page before last is a masterpiece!

[dmeck7755]

Now, just what is it with Hallie? On rather, in Hallie? Is it Cheline, Shoshana, or someone (or something) else entirely? It’s certainly not a benevolent goddess, if it one.

That side profile of her on page before last is a masterpiece!

Plus there is "godspeak" in the background of the speech bubble.  I have not been able to really do any translation. 

In the Discord, any of the above are choices

[dreki]

It may have been a benevolent goddess before the fracture - who has spiralled into madness since.  Or at least a goddess presumed to be benevolent who has since gone off her rocker enough to show her true colors.

Grandma certainly doesn't trust her, I'd really like to know more about how Grandma is able to communicate with her like that - since no one alive seems able to speak with Cheth and "Hallie" seems to be doing god-speak.

Now, just what is it with Hallie? On rather, in Hallie? Is it Cheline, Shoshana, or someone (or something) else entirely? It’s certainly not a benevolent goddess, if it one.

That side profile of her on page before last is a masterpiece!

She hasn't got the hair trident so I think Phaedra would be very sad for that to be Shoshana.  I kind of feel like Cheline after Cheth's recent breakdown over Shoshana.

[Linebyline]

Hmm... Maybe that's what the glasses are for.

Fake Halea is giving off massive Cheline vibes in this chapter, between the clear parallels to the Cheline statue and the god-tongue background of the speech bubble, but I'm still not entirely convinced. Cheth seems to be under the impression that Cheline isn't a villain, per se; he's more frustrated/disappointed with her. The one he outright despises is Shoshana, and even then it's heavily implied to be a fake Shoshana distinct from the real Shoshana whom he's actually quite fond of.

So my first guess would be that Halea's puppeteer is the fake Shoshana. But even if that's true, it doesn't tell us much. Who is the fake Shoshana? Was she Cheline after all, or someone else? Perhaps another god in the (headless) pantheon?

One thing I've noted before in comment threads is that Fake Halea's major color is green. Which could be seen as a mixture of Philemon/Shoshana Yellow and Cheline Blue, but is notably not the color worn by Garth and the other Plume Church clergy. Moreover, the artifact Phae will hopefully soon be convinced to start looking for is purple, which is both a mix of Cheth Red and Cheline Blue and the RGB inverse of green. This is, after all, a comic that isn't at all shy about leaning heavily on color symbolism.

So extrapolating from that, I hypothesize that Fake Halea is opposed to reuniting Cheline and Cheth, and invested in keeping the theocracy going.

So my best guess is that whoever is in control of Halea is opposed to the reunion between Cheth and Cheline. Quite possibly another member of the (headless?) pantheon who set up the division between Cheth and Cheline for her own purposes. To what end? I can't even begin to guess.

Though I guess I should read today's page. 

[dmeck7755]

I want more of grandma

[Jitter]

Whoa, ok, somethng’s happening! Based on panel two, something unexpected. Maybe we’ll learn more about ”Halea” sooner rather than later. What is that thimg on the right? Is it a raven skull?

[Linebyline]

Big page today, that's for sure. But I think Claire said at the beginning of the chapter that this scene was a flash-forward, so it's even money we get jerked back to the present just before the big reveal. You know, just in time for the ECCC hiatus.

EDIT: Oh, lots of people in the comments pointing out the similarity between the stripey bits on "Halea's" outfit and those on the bone church vestments Pavel based his costume on. Something plume-church-y is happening!

[Jitter]

Aren’t the stripey bits writing in godspeak? I haven’t looked for they decoding keys but I just thought these say Cheline, like stripes on Chet’s stuff says Chet.

[dmeck7755]

Aren’t the stripey bits writing in godspeak? I haven’t looked for they decoding keys but I just thought these say Cheline, like stripes on Chet’s stuff says Chet.

I think they could very likely be.  There are people on Discord that have done the translations.  I have been too lazy to try

[dmeck7755]

she is smiling behind that mask 😡

[Jitter]

She totally is. Or it.

[Linebyline]

Okay, so I've mentioned before that I'm Catholic. One thing that separates us from some other Christians is that we believe that our bodies are just as much us as the soul. Some Christians believe that we have bodies but we are our souls. The Gnostics took this to extremes, believing that our bodies, and ultimately all matter, are evil, created by a whole separate evil god.

The Plume Church seems to be taking this entirely in the opposite direction. Knowing that Cheth ends up with souls while bodies remain*, it does make sense that their form of funeral is a pyre, so the body can be scattered to the winds in order to be united with Cheline. (Of course that's not what actually happens, but what else is new for the Plume Church?) But even given that, it still strikes me as absolutely bizarre that the body would be privileged over the soul.

"Don't worry, you guys, Phaedra's soul may be in hell** but what's important is, her body is nice and safe with us! Now let's set it on fire!"


*You don't know how hard it is for me to say "body" instead of "remains" in this context.

**If they have the phrase "come hell or high water" then they have some version of hell, even if it isn't the same thing Christians mean by the term. Perhaps it means something more like hades/sheol, the place of the dead. That's one of the ways "He descended into hell" in the Apostles' Creed is interpreted, and it's the interpretation I personally favor even if it does rule out the Harrowing of Hell.

[JoB]

Okay, so I've mentioned before that I'm Catholic. One thing that separates us from some other Christians is that we believe that our bodies are just as much us as the soul.

... as the leaseholder of our family grave, I can assure you that the Catholic church of today isn't fiercely fighting for "burial, not incineration!!" anymore ... while enbalming is said to be standard procedure in (parts of?) the U.S. but almost unheard of here in central Europe.

(Sure, the limited availability of storage space - a.k.a. burial grounds - in densely populated areas helped that change of mind a lot.)

The Plume Church seems to be taking this entirely in the opposite direction. Knowing that Cheth ends up with souls while bodies remain*, it does make sense that their form of funeral is a pyre, so the body can be scattered to the winds in order to be united with Cheline. [...] But even given that, it still strikes me as absolutely bizarre that the body would be privileged over the soul.

The body being privileged over the soul does make sense for them, though. When you take it as a fact that upon death, the soul departs and winds up in the hands of your somewhat less favored deity, "let's make up for that with what we still have" is a more suitable basis for a religion than "oh noes, all is lost, anyway!". The body is privileged from square one in their belief, in that it can have some sort of salvation.

Doesn't mean that they wouldn't prefer to be able to perform proper rites for both, though.

[Linebyline]

Yeah, these days the Church is pretty chill about cremation, provided that (a) it isn't being done in denial of (or, I guess, an attempt to prevent) the Resurrection of the Body, and (b) the cremains are treated with the same respect that would be given to an unincinerated body. Which usually means burial or other interment. No scattering the ashes, no making them into gemstones or breast implants or tattoo ink or whatever other thing people have come up with.

It does make sense that after centuries of the current situation, Cheline's worshipers would make do with what they had. It's just the idea of salvation without a soul that's so incredibly foreign to me.

But in light of today's page, it makes a ton more sense: They're moving the body to where it belongs in anticipation of the souls being released from their prison and being reunited with their bodies. So it's actually a bit like the Catholic version (Heaven opened to souls at the First Coming, resurrection of the body at the Second) but in reverse order. The idea that it was the body and not the soul to receive salvation was just a misinterpretation on my part.

Also seeing those OSHA-noncompliant stairs in action fills me with unease.