Annotated 38-20
So far, this conspiracy story’s been told pretty well, by my lights. We’ve seen its effects on ordinary people thanks to the smear campaign against adventurers. We’ve had some thrilling machinations, with established characters falling like dominoes. We’ve had a solid conflict, with the highly capable if perhaps overly sincere Syr’Nj clashing with the devious Altruists. And now…comes quite a lot of talking, even by our standards.
It’s not the amount of talking I mind, though. It’s the belief underlying all that talk: the belief that conspirators can plan basically everything down to the tenth decimal point, as if chaos theory is just for non-geniuses or the poors. A Xanatos gambit allows for various possible outcomes and plans on turning each into a way to win, but too often, conspiracy stories assume there’s only one possible outcome that the conspirators have engineered with clockwork precision. Nothing’s quite wrong with what Jarvis has said so far, but oh, we’ll get there.
I suspect this reflects a certain anxious desire to convince everyone else, and maybe ourselves, that Guilded Age was more precisely planned than it was. If you’ve followed these annotations, you know that we had a lot of shit figured out well in advance…and there was a lot of other shit we sort of stumbled into. I mean, I love writing big revelations as much as anyone–“You see? You thought these four plot threads were unrelated, but it all fits together like a jigsaw!” Individual chapters in Guilded Age could be like that, maybe. But our series in general was more of a beautiful hot mess, swarming and bustling with character and life. This feels like trying to force it to be something it’s not.
Oh well. I do enjoy this really cool flashback panel, with younger versions of Annunziata, Iwatani, and Persson (the three standing on the left) and the actual flesh-and-blood Priestlord Gigundus (armored on the right), with a couple of now-departed others rounding out the group. Look at how bright-eyed Annunziata and Gigundus seem to be, and hoe everyone else varies between idealism and concentration. Back then, even Iwatani seems to have been happy just to be among peers. Great times, I’m sure. But things are always hopeful at the beginning.
I don’t know if there’s anything more appropriate for the Altruists than “trying to force it to be something it’s not.”
I’ll keep an eye out, but I don’t remember anything particularly egregious from the first time through.
I also feel this is a perfectly good conspiracy story, I’m enjoying it this time as much as the last!
Is it just me or does the white haired altruist look like JJ Bertram? Another life maybe?
I remember reading Sun Tzu… whose guide to strategy is nowhere near as deep as people pretend. The idea is never to plan for every outcome, but to have a bunch of acceptable results and then to pretend the one you get is where you wanted to be all along. His job was to deliver “victory” to his emperor, after all. And his philosophy was basically, “don’t let my ego get in the way” and his job and culture didn’t really let him admit defeat… so he wrote on how to redefine victory and survive. Rather a lot on “going with the flow”.
So when I see a Xanatos gambit, I can’t help but think that I’m not seeing a true mastermind in control of every outcome, but an opportunist taking advantage of the situation, a strategist putting backup plans in place… and a bullshitter looking smug, trying to sell you on his “inevitable” victory and your place in it.
Exactly!
Why trust an Altruist when he says he planned for everything? The dude’s just using momentum that came out of left field and claiming that the momentum was controlled.
I think there’s also some part delusion in there: I’m a genius, this is what I got, which is pretty good, therefore it’s what I wanted.
At least some of our altruists here may actually believe they’re doing something good for Gastonia, with some positive side effects for themselves. The temptation to simply assume that what’s good for them is good for Gastonia must be pretty strong, and so Jarvis may actually believe what he says, even while following mostly his personal interests.
Miyamoto, on the other hand, has probably no such delusions, because his endgame is a different one…
Regarding Jarvis’ point that Syr’Nj was not smart enough to pretend she hadn’t seen through their lies.
I wonder if the whole thing could have turned out differently if she wasn’t currently put off-balance by Byron’s death. Might she have been able to play along for some time and throw a wrench in their plans?
/sigh
This is just as depressing a commentary on power and wealth as it was the first time.