Annotated 36-26
My notes to Flo on the rest of Pardo’s speech:
Okay, here’s where things get interesting. The “points system” feels like more fatuous self-congratulation from the Heads of Houses, like Congress voting itself a pay raise, only not even about money but about empty, time-wasting praise. (You can see why my mind went to the Oscars.)
Buuuuuut… this actually represents the groundwork to exclude Heads who are not pulling their weight in a smoother, more efficient manner, setting up the consolidation that’s coming and working off the Annunziata precedent as well. Yet it should SOUND so much like empty bloviation that I think even Syr’Nj, especially in her current state of distraction, can be excused from missing the sinister implications. Dominos, dominos, setting up the dominos…
Ardaic in panel four: Mansplain mansplain mansplain mansplai–oh, right, outranked
Ardaic in the last panel, only without any inhibitions: Gaw DAYUMN she is SO SEXAY rn my sexual orientation is COMPETENCE I gotta get Jarvis to invite her to his secret Altruist cabal like STAT
Ah, nice to know what Ardaic was thinking in that last panel. I think some of us took that look on his face as uncharacteristically sinister.
I read that expression as more of a “Thank goodness. Someone is taking action“
Really? The thirst seemed very evident to me.
Not the first time I’ve misread a facial expression in a webcomic!
Mansplaining? Looks to me like a subordinate reassuring a superior. Kur’ik could’ve said the same thing.
+1 – if “a guy feeling confident and reassuring someone’s concern” is mansplaining now, we’re just teaching men to not even try.
Yeah, we the readers know Ardaic is wrong for multiple reasons but this never came across as ‘don’t get your bonnet in a fuss’ in tone. While the jerk has always been single mindedly loyal to the house (good soldiers follow orders) he has always showed respect to Syr’nj as someone who is more than capable oppose to the heads of houses earlier in the story.
Flo actually had the word “mansplain” in the panel description, and I know that’s not a slam-dunk proof of anything, but consider this: would Ardaic volunteer his “Perhaps you’re overreacting” opinion, unsolicited, to Jarvis, to Pardo, even to Annunziata back when Annunziata was around? Seems like the answer’s “no.”
There’s one non-gender-based reason for Ardaic to be more paternalistic around Syr’Nj, and that is that he did command her once: echoes of their earlier working relationship have been present since Syr’Nj ascended. But there is one very, very gender-based reason too. Ardaic’s romantic feelings toward Syr’Nj are starting to reach a crescendo.
You are correct that Ardaic has generally treated Syr’Nj with all the respect due her station and more. In Flo’s and my headcanons, he was stumbling just a bit with that respect here because he’s starting to openly wish they had a different sort of relationship, one where he could properly take her in his arms and soothe her troubles away.
We certainly didn’t intend “mansplain” to reduce Ardaic to a cartoon chauvinist. Unlike a cartoon chauvinist, he reacts very well the instant she puts him in his place. In fact, he respects her more for it.
That is a good point.
At first I really couldn’t see how this was mansplaining from Ardaic, but yeah I don’t expect him ever saying something like that to any of the other heads.
I imagine he might try to dissuade them from spending resources on something he thought was no problem, but he would have used different words.
Of course there is also the point that of all the heads, Syr’Nj is probably the only one he could tell “I think you worry too much” without risking punishment for himself. Any other of the heads would have too much ego to stand for it, excepts perhaps Dean Reynolds.
But in the end I probably shouldn’t argue about the reasons for a character’s behaviour with it’s creators :D
I think this is a nicely written scene.
I think it’s fair.
I mean, if mansplaining was enough for “cartoon villainhood” we’d be in deep shit.
Mansplaining is an annoying thing, where men when talking to women, tend to telegraph “I know what I am talking about, so here’s the truth”, and since it’s not really hard to detect, it mean women feel they’re being condescended at.
And they’re not wrong.
So it’s a twofer: 1) It’s already annoying. 2) It’s condescension based solely on gender roles.
Not villainous, but stupid and revealing.
Call me old-fashioned, but I can think of another not-gender-based reason.
He appreciates the way she thinks, which is different from the rest of the heads of houses. She’s quite frank with him about it. But he sees that she values rationality and discourse over bloviation and arrogance, so he’s moved to be direct with her in a way that would be “above his station” with the old boys power hierarchy club.
Now, sure – maybe it’s racially based; she happens to be a wood elf. Maybe it’s naivete; she’s new around here. Or maybe, darn it, it’s that she’s a desperately refreshing source of clarity, and that she’s taking herself into potentially real peril in a way that’s risky, and he’s calling her on it.
I dunno. I just like to interpret the best, most charitable motives. Sure the guy has a boner for her, the subtext is there. But he acts, he *acts*, respectfully to her despite that hang-up. I love that about his character, and I think it’s sad to paintbrush him as a creep just because he’s a dude with warm stirrings of the heart.
I totally respect and appreciate the intentions of the authors and artists behind the art. But I also think that art is nothing if it has no room for subjective interpretation. So I’m sticking with Ardaic’s on the side of light, here, even if that light is a little charcoal grey at the edges.
Is it me or do the last panel’s Ardaic looks like he was edited in? Something about the colors and the lines make him feel a bit like it was done in a different software/setup.
It’s just you. But that’s okay.
It’s probably just the lighting on him that makes him look different.
He looks a bit as if he was enlarged from a smaller drawing, with the lines being thicker than in panel 4. But the same applies to Syr’Nj, and I think it’s something you did relatively consistently: Closeups have thicker lines, and further away people loose detail, to the point of looking a little more cartoony at a certain distance, which also changes the character of the style a little for me.
…which is not meant as criticism. I can’t even draw a proper stick figure, and have no idea how others do it, but this is a thing that occurred to me in GA, which I haven’t noticed elsewhere. I think many other comics just don’t add much detail to their characters when they zoom in, so you don’t really lose much when zooming out.
Just me how DARE you! How DAR
Just kidding, I’d never. Thanks for the response, chief.
His hair is certainly a lighter color than in my gravatar.
The way the lighting changes, they’re walking down a fairly short corridor, which is mainly lit by daylight coming in through a skylight or somesuch in the room they’re walking towards.
Both start out sort of eigengrau, then first Syr and then Ard get illuminated “directly” by that light coming down from above.
I say “directly” because it’s a grey light, looks like indirect daylight (the light from the sky, where the sunlight itself is shaded out).
If that was intended, well done.