Annotated 38-21
This is where Jarvis’ story starts falling apart for me. I have to believe he’s bullshitting Syr’Nj here, just to get through this scene.
Let’s start with the most obvious thing: why does Ardaic need to tell Mother Scarlett shit if panel one already shows Gigundus looking directly at Frigg? She has to be able to see through his eyes, right? It’s not like Ardaic kept tabs on which tavern Frigg went to or where she was sleeping, so he shouldn’t know any more specifics about her location than Scarlett already does. Or maybe he had one of his spies follow her. You know, the spies we’ve never mentioned he has, let alone shown.
Related: does Jarvis understand that a “puppet” can’t really be “autonomous”? I think he’s trying to say “capable of seeming autonomous,” but…okay, moving on.
I can buy that the conspirators regarded the church’s power as a threat to Gastonian society. They may’ve even been right. And I guess they could figure out Gigundus’ secret if some of them had been colleagues with him in the HoH’s early days. (“He doesn’t take off his helmet any more, have you noticed?”)
But for Heart of-All’s sake, why risk the whole Peacemaker initiative by helping Scarlett recapture Frigg? Jarvis treats this as a thuddingly obvious strategy, but its most likely outcome was Frigg as a blood-bonded zombie in Scarlett’s service, making “their” Peacemakers weaker and Scarlett, their enemy, more powerful. Chapters 5 and 6 would not have been an interesting story if there hadn’t been high risk of our heroes’ failure! Most of the plot hinged on the contributions of Bandit Keynes, who was then a rando thief, a rogue factor the Altruists could not possibly have planned for.
It’s especially weird to see Ardaic risking his own pet project like this, though I guess it does underline that his loyalty to “Gastonian interests” will always come first for him until the climax of his own arc.
Maybe we felt that the question of “why the Peacemakers were never tried for killing a Head of House” was a loose end that needed tying up, but the answers seem obvious at the end of Chapter 6. The actual Head of House was never really there, and the only witnesses to “his” end were nuns unlikely to make a federal case of it. Maybe one or two poor souls confused Scarlett’s abuse with love and tried to get Ardaic to prosecute Frigg for killing her. But the self-defense clause would likely protect Frigg on that one even if Ardaic pursued it. As it was, he’d simply “lose” their petitions in his fireplace.
Fuckin’ great art on this page, though, which gets even better when you remember John’s working off Erica’s designs. That Mother Scarlett in panel three is fire. (If you’ll pardon the expression.)
“Most of the plot hinged on the contributions of Bandit Keynes, who was then a rando thief, a rogue factor…”
ISWYDT
But it’s true, she just stole the show that chapter!
Holy shit Campbell, you’re your most savage reader.
I’ve always thought the scenes just painted the picture that the words evoked or wanted to invoke, but might not be how it really happened.
Like you read a book or hear something descibed,and you have your own picture of what the characters look like, how a scene plays out, … So Ardaic being the messenger depicted might be because we know him and thus use him to fill in the blank of the stated messenge(r) sent.
First one probably being Gigundus-alive, who might not be as zealous for gathering volatile elements back to the flock. And after his death Scarlett probably couldn’t tap into Gigundus’ memories when creating the poppet, but her own, which didn’t have her having watched where Frigg goes.
And the rest of the Heads could seemingly easy tell when Gigundus got poppeteered, so of course they wouldn’t reveal all their assets to phonies.
And you can definitely program items to do things on their own. Like a toy dog that walks and barks. It does it all on its own, but can’t do nothing unless you turn it on, can do nothing against you turning it of or picking it up and turning it to different direction.
My understanding is that Gigandus-poppet was just highly complex simulacrum, but one that is turned on, off and moved if necessary by Scarlett, thus making it autonomous on its own, but poppet under the power of Scarlett.
And maybe it was a bit of a gamble, but we are not given much indication of how sure the Heads were about the abilities of the nuns and adventures alike. They could have easily determined that adventures were more than match to the nuns. Probably were right too. Not to mention they were as a whole a rogue element, so they could easily be thrown under the bus as “adventurers be crazy” if things failed (like we see done now when Peacemakers are MUCH more established and still people buy into the whole Peacemakers Eval -plot). And pet project or not, they were also a dangerous possibility, like we see them become against the Heads, so it was a gamble where you lose one bothersome possibility to another, one way or the other. And neither can at the end of the day blame you for anything.
But where you could definitely have blamed them. Like said, even triumphant, successful initiative like Peacemakers, who’ve literrally saved town after town from cultists…
One paper.
And they’re the bad guys. The public did find out that Gigundus “died”. All the Heads would have needed to do is print “Adventirers did it” and people would buy it. Sure some of them might even like them for throwing down a tyrant, but none would think twice when the Heads declared a manhunt for them. That’s just how it goes.
But that’s all just one way to take it.
I think it’s real unlikely Gigundus died after the Peacekeepers-to-be met. So no, the first panel depicts the automaton staring at Frigg (whether it functions at all without Scarlett directly controlling it or not).
Re: ‘Autonomous puppet’…seems fine to me.
Create automaton. Program it to do tasks. ‘Go to location. If situation X do task A. If situation Y do task B. Else, call home, await further instructions.’ Flip the on button, and leave it be unless it calls home. It has no free will or real decision-making ability – it is a puppet – but it functions autonomously until it encounters a situation you didn’t account for when programming it.
Oh dear.
I really had never noticed these enormous pitfalls in most conspiracy plots before you started pointing them out in this chapter, T.
Now I fear you might have ruined conspiracy plots for me, and I’m just going to see these holes everywhere from here on!
SOME of what Jarvis is saying is true, but the whole Araic-ratting-Frigg angle is Jarvis trying to throw a wedge between Ardaic and Syr’Nj.
That’s how I read it, anyway …
That’s a good one.
My take is that Jarvis is explaining stuff that happened as if it was stuff that they intended to happen, as someone mentioned below the previous post.
They didn’t rat Frigg out to Mother Scarlett, they realized too late that she and Frigg had a common history and couldn’t find a politically-acceptable way of protecting Frigg from the consequences — and so they crossed fingers, hoped for the best and found that it turned out about as well as they could have hoped.
On the other hand: We’ve just seen them get rid of several other heads in very quick succession — so I’m not sure why they couldn’t have just given “Gigundus” the boot and removed him from the house. Jarvis glosses over that very quickly, so (maintaining my faith in the storytellers… one of whom just revoked that faith in himself…) maybe even that’s not really quite what motivated them. Maybe they didn’t actually mind Gigundus that much but after his puppet died, they decided to use it to their advantage. Very professional politics, if you asked me.
My Ptolemian epicycle: the Heads of Houses had a system only allowing their magic spying mirror to be used with all of them present, or otherwise fully documented/witnessed, to avoid mutual suspicions that they would spy on each other, so they knew Gigundus wasn’t able to use it to track down Frigg.
Pinocchio would like to have some words with you about “autonomous puppet” not being a thing.
But in today’s take, wouldn’t he still be a real boy, even though physically he had not yet been made to match his “reality”?
…
Now if that doesn’t catch fire, then nothing will… XD
Was thinking about those quotation marks, but I think leaving them will stir more… Conversation on the matter…
Considering this page is mostly a reminder for something that happened chapters ago, not sweating the details as it still works for me as a reader. To be honest T, I think you are in danger of over explaining and overanalyzing your own work. Please don’t pull a Lucas on us and start Special Edition to fix things that don’t need to be fix. First time reading, I only had one major criticism of one page and I honestly regret posting considering it was forgettable being one page of a epic.
I promise, SR, no matter what happens, the chances of me or Flo or John doing a Special Edition are less than zero. I might fix one lettering job that’s always bothered me in chapter 49 and I’ve tweaked the occasional alt text, but that’s the extent of it. That way lies madness.
Annotations are done through the end of Chapter 39, and they get a lot less in-depth after two more installments. This particular section just kinda gets to me.
Eh, could work if you think of it as an audition as well. If they can’t solve *this*, they’re not the peacemakers you need.
if they *can* solve it but two of them are dead afterwards, they *were* the peacemakers you needed, but not anymore.
And I guess they could figure out Gigundus’ secret if some of them had been colleagues with him in the HoH’s early days. (“He doesn’t take off his helmet any more, have you noticed?”)
I just assumed they knew from the start — had seen him get sick or injured and die — and had Scarlett do her thing as a power grab. Use him to talk up things the other HoH want, or to take the fall for something that went poorly. Use him to consolidate power in the church and grab it when he was revealed to be a fraud. Scarlett just turned out to have her own machinations.
I agree with others thinking Jarvis may be telling the story he wants to tell. “We gave Scarlett Frigg to distract her so we could try to topple Gigundus, but then y’all scrubs showed up and took care of both of our problems, and we couldn’t persecute you because self defense” isn’t a great story or one that shows leverage against her. And, let’s assume Gigundus-Scarlett did see Frigg in the scrying bowl, that takes care of the imaginary spies problem, but it doesn’t mean Jarvis can’t take the opening to throw Ardaic under the bus. Hey, Ardaic conveniently isn’t here to say that’s not what happened.
You’re your own worst critic, they say.