The Comet King From Unsong Is Obviously Kanye West

nobody knows what it means, but it's provocative

(Bonus post today for the niche fantheory enjoyers. Unsong is a serial webnovel written by Scott Alexander, the Slate Star Codex/Astral Codex Ten guy; if you haven’t read it, feel free to resume your Skunk Ledger consumption when we return to our regularly scheduled programming next time. Alternatively, go listen to this track on repeat and become enlightened.)

I.

Here is the story of how Jalaketu “Jala” West, otherwise known as the Comet King, son of Comet West, is conceived:

And the Comet said: “Then I will shine on you.”

And the maiden said: “Shine.”

And for a moment the Comet shone on her with its full light, and she shivered with cold.

A beam of light is called a ray. The maiden is Indian; “cold” in Hindi is “thanda”, with the “th” pronounced halfway to a “d”. Kanye West’s parents are named Ray and Donda West.

Kanye has four children: from oldest to youngest, North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm. The Comet King also has four children: Nathanda, Caelius, Jinxiang, and Sohu. Their Hebrew initials: nun, samekh, shin, samekh.

The Comet King is seen as a Messiah; Kanye made an album called Yeezus. Kanye produced for Roc-a-fella; the Comet King is a fellow produced by a rock.

They both initially rose to fame following a perilous incident on a highway…

Last October Grammy-nominated producer KANYE WEST was in a nearly fatal car accident. His jaw was fractured in nearly three places. Two weeks later he recorded this song with his mouth still wired shut... so the world could feel his pain!

Yo, Gee, they can't stop me from rappin', can they? Can they, Hop?

…subsequently enjoyed a period of massive popularity, taking on a little moral ambiguity in the course of offending America’s sweetheart but ultimately emerging more acclaimed than ever…

“You’re a fan?” asked the Lady.

Jalaketu knelt, like David had knelt before Saul three thousand years earlier. “I wronged you, my lady”, he told Reagan. “What I said was hurtful. Please forgive me.”

…and only later flipped from revered to hated under a new name.

Yeah we still hood famous

In the end, the Comet King yields his place to a younger man, the keeper of the Explicit Name that will remake Earth into Paradise, the Messiah ben David to the Comet King’s Messiah ben Joseph. And of course “Messiah ben David, holder of the keys of the kingdom of Heaven” is just the kabbalistic meaning of “Peter Davidson.”

II.

Kanye’s most acclaimed album is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which is a pretty good description of Unsong, so it should come as no surprise that the album is a thinly veiled biography of the Comet King.

Jalaketu is conceived in a Dark Fantasy…

And then she slept and then her brother found her and then she went back to the bright electric lights of civilization and then she dismissed the whole thing as a dream.

…after which he is born as a Gorgeous otherworldly-looking child…

He looked foreign, maybe Indian, not the Native Americans who were so common around this part of Colorado, but Indian from India. But his hair was blond. In this light it even looked white.

…who soon rises to Power.

My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty
Is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts
Reality is catching up with me
Taking my inner child, I'm fighting for custody
With these responsibilities that they entrusted me
As I look down at my diamond-encrusted piece
Thinking no one man should have all that power

He goes around fighting evil by using his angelic abilities to channel All of the Lights divinely powering the universe’s workings:

Fast cars, shooting stars
All of the lights, all of the lights
Until it's Vegas everywhere we are

But eventually his transition to a Monster begins when he nearly destroys the world by saying the Explicit Name of God…

“Not going to destroy the world!” said the Comet King. He didn’t look remotely human at this point. His skin had gone night-black, his hair was starlight-silver, no one could have counted how many limbs he had.

…because he is So Appalled at the prospect of returning home without having defeated the devil Thamiel.

“...We can hold onto Baikal while we try to figure out where to go from here. I can convince people to…wait…oh no. Oh no.”

“WHAT?” asked Uriel.

“I just realized,” said the Comet King. “What am I going to tell my wife?”

And he fully changes over to the twisted version of himself, the Other King, when his wife Robin sells her soul and lets the Devil in a New Dress for the night…

We ain't married, but tonight I need some consummation
May the Lord forgive us, may the gods be with us
In that magic hour, I seen good Christians
Make brash decisions, oh, she do it
What happened to religion? Oh, she lose it

…and Jalaketu must then watch as Thamiel comes to take the love of his life and Runaway with her down into Hell…

Never was much of a romantic
I could never take the intimacy
And I know I did damage
'Cause the look in your eyes is killing me
I guess you knew of that advantage
'Cause you could blame me for everything
And I don't know how I'ma manage
If one day, you just up and leave

…which causes him to pull a 180 and sinmaxx his existence into a Hell of a Life to get there the old-fashioned way and save her…

We headed to hell for Heaven's sakes, huh

…because he has to win the Blame Game of accumulating credit for his sinful atrocities by not doing them for the greater consequentialist good.

Let’s call out Names, Names, I hate you more

So he lets his old identity become Lost in the World to disguise his reappearance as the genocidal Other King.

You’re my freedom, you’re my jail
You're my lies, you're my truth
You're my war, you're my truce

His reign of terror culminates in his decision to kabbalistically nuke the angel Uriel and trigger Armageddon, leaving Aaron Smith-Teller as the only major character Who Will Survive In America.

Physics is broken, the world is collapsing, the apocalypse is in full swing. We need to make things right.

At last, the Comet King reveals himself, telling Aaron, you can See Me Now; he finally explains the whole plan before killing himself to enter Hell and free all its inhabitants.

Straight to jail yo, in a hellhole
Right next to Lucifer, tell 'em I said "Hello"
Ask if I'ma be there soon and tell him I said "Hell no"
Yo what you say when your people get outta jail, huh?

III.

I miss the old Jala, the two years old Jala
Save all our souls Jala, set on his goals Jala
I hate the new Jala, 2002 Jala
No longer true Jala, the Vegas coup Jala
I miss the sweet Jala, defend the peace Jala
I gotta say at that time no one could beat Jala
I killed my mother Jala, then swore no others Jala
And now I look and look around and I’m the other Jala
I used to love Jala, I used to trust Jala
I even had the starry sword, I thought I was Jala
What if Jala spoke a Name for Jala
To save the old Jala? Man, that'd be so Jala
Somebody has to Jala, no one else will Jala
And I'll kill you like Jala kills Jala

IV.

The overt meaning of “Watching Jonah Hill¹ in 21 Jump Street made me like Jewish people again” is “Watching Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street made me like Jewish people again.”  The kabbalistic meaning of “Watching Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street made me like Jewish people again” is “Sometimes it’s necessary to confront God in front of a hungry whale and smite the Devil on a great mountain to unite good and evil, resolve the fundamental question of theodicy, and kabbalistically save everyone’s souls forever.”

Jonah refers to Ana receiving the Explicit Name of God as she’s about to get eaten by Leviathan. Hill refers to Pike’s Peak, where Sohu defeats Thamiel in battle. According to Ana’s duality-based theodicy, the Lord is one while the devil is two. When the Comet King and Aaron speak the Explicit Name, the separateness of evil dissolves; two become one; 2 -> 1.

He sobbed, then handed me the bident. I took it from its far end, the two points in my two hands, the single-pointed end facing the Devil. A unident. He kept sobbing. I held the unident undaunted. Finally, I thrust it at him, and he disappeared, a puff of smoke, a thread too weak to hold.

To jump is to suddenly ascend. When the superorganism made up of Aaron and his kabbalistic polycule dissolves evil, all the souls in Hell rise up to paradise, where they can once more bask in the light of the Jewish God.

So, I'm you. I'm us. It's us. It went from being Kanye, which means the only one, to just Ye.

ADDENDUM: saw this about six hours after posting, because nothing is ever a coincidence.

1. Strictly speaking, Jonah whale. Moses hill.