Annotated 7-18
Sometimes people mistake your comedy for serious, sometimes people mistake your serious for comedy. You can try to clarify the message, but some of ’em just ain’t gonna get it. And all you can do then is roll with it and hope you’re still accomplishing a net positive.
In the original draft of this story, Baron Splande was going to turn out to be Ardaic in disguise, having concocted this whole scheme to observe first-hand how his two least-vetted Peacemakers handled an unusual assignment. Phil nixed that idea on the basis that Ardaic needed to treat them as if he trusted them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have a fair chance to earn that trust, and Ardaic is a fair man when he’s not following the specific orders of an unfair regime.
I was cool with that but not really sure how to extend Gravedust’s routine from what I’d done on the previous page, so Phil stepped in to write both dialogue and action here.
It does raise the question as to what happened to old Splandey, and why the Peacemakers didn’t try and contact him later
If the Houses didn’t arrange for an accident to befall him, he probably fled.
As for why the Peacemakers didn’t recruit him, the Houses already knew about the baron. And he didn’t exactly get a rave review from Bandit either. So he probably wasn’t even consider him.
Plus being a baron, he likely had his own ambitions that didn’t necessarily line up with the Peacemakers.
In some ways, what happened to Ardaic is almost political commentary, though I’m sure you didn’t mean to be prophetic. The “good soldier” who is faithful to an unscrupulous — nay, evil — and crazed leader for the sake of what that leader may do for the nation… it’s a bitter fate, though better than he may deserve.
I’m reading a book right now called The End of History and the Last Man, and its predictions are about as off as you’d expect with a title that presumptuous. Many of us think of the current presidential administration in apocalyptic terms, but history repeats itself in ways large and small.
The trick is to learn from past mistakes, but given that we didn’t stop “Teh Dumbening” which led up to this point, it seems we didn’t learn after all.