Annotated 38-9
As we started preparing to (oh no, spoilers) say goodbye to Pardo, I did my damnedest to reconcile him and Iwatani as they were here with the very, very different versions of them that showed up in their respective first speaking roles.
Old Pardo: “We gotta calibrate other races’ fear of us to be just right, so those rotten un-humans don’t attack us.” New Pardo: “I love our friend-races! Especially the way that talking to wood elves gives me the chance to make puns! It’s like those puns grow on trees… Hahaha, I did it again!”
Old Iwatani: “I am SO INSULTED by everything that doesn’t give me and my family the privilege to which we’re accustomed!” New Iwatani: “La la laaa, just biding my time, doesn’t really matter who insults me when I’m smart enough to make my family’s privilege even privileger in the long run, la la laaa.”
It seems that Pardo’s “origin story” was getting his kid (or kids?) saved, for which he was genuinely grateful and which downgraded his xenophobia to honest compassion with a few patronizing habits. The common thread is his pragmatic streak: as charmingly guileless as he often seems, he does understand geopolitics and the need to play that game for the good of the country. He was well ahead of most of the other Heads of Houses in that understanding, as they more or less admit here. What he does not understand is that there are other games being played in politics, games in which he and his “colleagues” may not be on the same team.
Iwatani’s “origin story,” in turn, seems to have been getting his kid saved and recognizing the change in Pardo. Both of these circumstances forced him to admit that the static world he took for granted, a world in which his family sat at the top, was changing. And as he saw how stammery and uncertain Pardo now seemed, he began to think in a new way. He could see such change as mere threat, but wouldn’t it be better to see it as opportunity? Perhaps he could make a few changes himself.
Hope that works for you! If you don’t…oh, well, it’s still probably the best omelet we could’ve constructed out of these broken eggs we’d left lying around.
Alt-text is messed up…looks like you copied it in there 4 times.
I think that might be the joke? I don’t recall what it was back in the day.
Here’s the original transcribed from the archives:
‘Sigh… I *said*, ‘I remember well the day Byron, Syr’Nj, frigg, and their dwarf and elf companions rescued our children from the pirates. I could see how it changed you. Less than a month afterward, your thinking had gone from how much other races should fear us… to how much we should respect them.’ And then there was a flashback and then Bedard said ‘Change was difficult to accept. But you were right.’ And then *I* said ‘We needed to watch out for complacent Heads of House, like Annunziata and Gigundus, who weren’t pulling their weight…’ and then ARDAIC said ‘And start looking for newer, more zealous Heads who might.’ And then MIYAMOTO said ‘Even if that meant looking under very dark corners.’ And then *I* said ‘it does wound us, Pardo, that you are facing your current difficulties. But in a way, you predicted them.’ And then *YOU* said ‘… What?’
And then *T* said that all 4 times over in the annotated comic’s alt-text, with some borked html, and then *YOU* said ‘Alt-text is messed up… looks like you copied it in there 4 times.’ And then *I* had a flashback to the archived alt-text, and then I said ‘Here’s the original transcribed from the archives: Sigh… *I* said, ‘I remember well the day- but then I couldn’t continue the gag because of a vaudevi-
*vaudeville hook*
Heh heh!
Tried to copy-paste from the original, and something went wrong! Not sorry if it gave y’all some entertainment this fine morning. (Fixed now.)
So this whole politicking is generally hard to grasp for me. I hope I never end up in politics because it’d be basically impossible to navigate for me.
They say one thing and mean another (no idea what, though), and suddenly the guards start advancing.
If it weren’t for the guards in the background and Pardo’s somewhat panicked face, I would have not the tiniest idea what’s about to happen, and why they’re talking at length about next to nothing… can someone translate this scene?
All I can read is “dear Pardo, what a shame your village got ransacked — oops, now we’re firing you, too!”, and everyone plays along, and it just doesn’t seem to make sense. Iwatani obviously wants to remove all of them eventually, but he needs an official reason, and I believe he is somehow making an argument on this page about why Pardo should be removed from the council, because otherwise why use so many words? But that’s not what his sentences say, so … dammit, this is hard.
There’s a clue to the official reason for Pardo’s dismissal here, but it’s fairly subtle, I think. Tomorrow’s episode spells the reason out more plainly.
If this is your first time going through this, it’s the setup and tomorrow is the reveal.
This is not the first although I did not skip forward to remind myself of how this continues.
I just have, and there’s indeed something of an explanation, but to me, all this is still a lot of words kind of dancing around the whole matter but not actually saying anything, and I’m sure that they make some kind of sense to most people — but not to me.