Annotated 11-15
(Photo credit to Gangler52)
Syr’Nj’s dialogue in panel 2 comes from me, and it fell into the category of things I wished I could actually say at the time I was writing it. One of my professional relationships (I was still juggling a fair bit at this point) put me in the position of accepting help from someone I no longer liked or trusted. A colleague had set up a deal with this party and all three of us were honoring it, and I couldn’t say much as long as he was holding up his end, but I worried about a nasty collapse like this one, fueled by frustrated narcissism. Didn’t happen, but I still think I dodged a bullet there.
There’s something that would’ve been the furthest thing from my mind when this strip first appeared, but which seems clear now I know how Best turns out in the end. That something is in the very panel (#3) in which we see Payet at his rock-bottom worst: his tears. At the time, those looked like the childish tantrum tears of an irredeemable narcissist. In retrospect, they seem more like the genuinely pained tears of a man who, for all his posturing, deep down suspects he’s not the Chosen One but a worthless piece-of-shit loser, and seemingly has just had his suspicions confirmed. His “BECAUSE I AM!” routburst is the last, crumbling defence of his ego in light of what he saw in the basin.
It’s these small details that make rereads so interesting, things that change with knowing what comes later on.
This page really punched me in the gut the first time around. I hadn’t been sure what to think about Best at this point; had he really tamed his ego and become a decent guy? Was he a sociopath, treating the others as equals only because it might benefit himself? In short, should I like him or not? I had been leaning more and more towards “like” up until he flipped the
tablebasin. But just when I had decided that “nope, he’s still an asshole”: boom, third panel. It was too knee-jerk and over the top to be genuine. He wasn’t a narcissist or a sociopath; he had a giant inferiority complex! And so, instead of liking or disliking him, I pitied him. And I was so not prepared for that.I’m honestly having trouble not empathizing with Best here. He spent the first part of his life feeling like the lowest of the low, with no prospects whatsoever. Then one day he’s told, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is destined for greatness. He’s lavished with favors of all types, treated like a king. When you go from that low to that high, you know what’s waiting for you is a long, long fall, and you don’t even want to think about toppling, no matter how precarious that pillar becomes.
Is it me, or does Best’s hair in panel three start to resemble that of another well-known blond narcissist?