Annotated 45-22
FB: Taro’s Reign of Unnerving Smiles is going to be great for the emoticon industry, if nothing else.
Ardaic’s performance is lacking because his faith is lacking, and the biggest reason for that by far is the spoiled tyrant he’s now serving. My on-the-job results tended to suffer when I stopped believing in my bosses, too.
Speaking of failures to believe…it’d be dishonest of me to deny that Taro ending up in charge of Gastonia/Iwatania was a bridge too far for some readers. The reaction against it might have been stronger—and we might have written it differently—if it hadn’t coincided with the election of Donald Trump, which, again, upended a lot of assumptions about how politics worked and what kinds of smarts you actually needed to assume power. I don’t entirely disagree that there are some story issues here, but I think some things make more sense if you focus on the personalities involved and ignore how much you, personally, may have wanted to see Taro suffer instant karma.
For instance, “Why doesn’t Ardaic just shank the bastard?” is a question that misunderstands Ardaic. He is far too rule-bound to even consider killing a government figure on his own initiative like that. “Why don’t the other Heads kill or at least stop this kid?” is a little better, but Iwatani has done a great job of removing anybody who might have threatened his family’s ascension. Of the remaining Heads, only Miyamoto has the ambition to fill that vacuum, and Taro is at least sensible enough to take measures against him. Miyamoto can’t get anyone else on his side because he can’t offer a plausible path to victory in the war, and the Iwatanis can, and that’s too pressing an issue for anyone with sense to ignore. Jarvis won’t like Taro at all, but he’s too mono-focused on war issues to bother with the home front. He knows that switching strategies halfway through could actually be worse than following Taro’s continuation of the original strategy, from a strict winning-the-war perspective. Caneghem actively prefers Taro in charge because he wants a weak Iwatania that won’t have any chance of detecting his own plans for withdrawal. Bedard just loves the drama, and Taro in charge is an endless source of drama. And ultimately, Ardaic knows he’s not going to get the other Heads to support him in a proper trial of Taro for killing his family, so here we are.
The weakest link in this whole arc is probably the war plans: we ended up glossing over any details that’d justify how those worked, why they were proprietary, and why they were essential to the war effort. I can easily believe Iwatani’s plans were better than anything Miyamoto would offer—he’d shown more smarts than Miyamoto at every turn—but proving them better than Jarvis’s approach, and unguessable by Jarvis, would take a lot more evidence. Also, Iwatani’s shorthand probably isn’t so indecipherable, so Bandit stealing those plans isn’t just lucky for Taro, it’s lucky for us as writers. If we had it to do over again, we might have established that the Iwatanis had trading partners in far-off lands that were loyal to them and not “Gastonia,” responsible for supplying essential materials…or a mercenary squad supplementing the army, or something like that.
The other weak point is that Taro’s intelligence is honestly a little variable, depending on what the plot requires, what made us laugh, and what points we wanted to make.
But mostly, I still find this coup depressingly plausible. Now, I doubt that Taro’s reign would last a year had the war been won. Probably, Miyamoto would try and fail to seize power, or else Taro would just get him assassinated preemptively. But Jarvis would decide to take over sooner or later, Taro would likely never see that coming, and Ardaic could’ve been persuaded to kill Taro if it were Jarvis giving the order. As it is, other things will catch up with all of them first.
I can buy Ardaic not just drowning Taro in the nearest cesspit because he’s rulebound and technically Taro is the new ruler and losing the entire ruling family during wartime could be disastrous. What I can’t buy is he or anyone else for that matter believing Taro memorized these super secret and somehow unbeatable war plans or is capable of leading using them when all he’s ever shown is that he’s an opportunistic and evil little thug.
Add to that, the remaining three Heads of House are ambitious and amoral bastards, and the only real protection Taro had against them was just disposed of (by himself, no less). I could believe them using him as a tool and/or figurehead rather than just getting rid of him, but letting him have all the power like they do utterly destroys my suspension of disbelief. Jarvis is too grounded in military realities, Miyamoto is too full of himself, and Beddard’s love of drama noted above would probably be more satiated with an open scandal about a regicidal prince.
The comparison to Trump’s disastrous presidency is all fine and well, but to say the least, this really isn’t the same situation.
I can buy it just because of the fact that acting immediately to take Taro out would be a bit reckless. At the moment, most of them are otherwise preoccupied with the war effort, and stringing the kid along for a couple months before he tragically trips and breaks his neck going down the stairs too quickly is likely easier than having him murdered right now, especially when his sob story of having his entire family poisoned by savages is going to help boost the populace’s hatred for them.
They’re basically acting like he’s Joffrey from Game of Thrones. Yes, yes, he’s got the crown, but we’ll just keep him distracted with shiny toys while the REAL business goes on in the high tower that his tiny little legs would tire out from climbing.
Taro is always good for some doctor suess level smiles.
As far as Taro’s ascent to power being believable, I cant believe Jarvis or Miyamoto would ever put up with that little twerp enough to give him actual power. Pit Friend is also correct, i doubt theyd believe he has months of war plans memorized beyond a vague outline and probably not enough to be useful.
I somehow keep forgetting how much of a scheming bitch Jarvis can be, but now that you mention it I can totally see him outsmarting and usurping Taro, possibly even in a way that first removes Miyamoto as a threat.
It still doesn’t make sense that Jarvis wasn’t already privy to, aware of and planning the war effort. Being the highest figure in the military, how is it that Jarvis wouldn’t already know this stuff?
What should have happened is that Jarvis simply came in himself and swept everything under the rug, totally aware of what was going on and gathering what evidence he needed. He is definitely more war minded and knowing that losing the entire new house to an assassination from it’s youngest would destroy morale, so propping Taro up makes sense, and then when the war is over arresting him for the truth also makes sense.
The Trump analogue works. But this isn’t a democracy where there is at least the facade of pretending to accept the majorities will. This is a political society that has had no trouble scheming and murdering already.
Jarvis letting Taro do anything that wasn’t sitting in a cell to rot, letting Taro actually be able to make decisions, is perhaps one of the stupidest things the war minded general can do. The focus on the war plans only makes it worse.
Ultimately I never bought this. It feels really bad. Being told down by Jarvis probably would have worked better for Ardaic too, as he respects Jarvis. It feels a lot weaker for him in the long run that who he turns against is this. It’s not a good thing that it takes him forever to do so either. If it were Jarivs, it would make sense that it takes so long and be a genuinely heroic moment when he finally stops trusting his leader. Not enough to make up for all he’s done, but genuinely heroic all the less.
Ardaic and Jarvis look like fools letting this literal idiot take control. The trade route might have worked, but would have felt a lot less connected to Ardaic’s current issues and would have made too much sense. A trade route like that being lost could not only destroy a country at war but a country after war. But Jarvis himself being that in the thick of things would have been another pay off for how clever he was.
To be clear I am talking about Republican efforts to stifle votes and gerrymandering when I say a facade to respect votes, not the 2020 election.
I think the most believable this could have been is Ardaic protecting Taro’s secret for the reasons presented and helping him pretend to the other conspirators that Iwatani was alive, just sick or even better, ailing after an assassination attempt. The conspirators may have had their doubts but they definitely would not have much time to act on them due to the war.
I never had much trouble with Taro’s ascension because like T, I always thought that it was entirely plausible, but never a permanent arrangement as it soon would become obvious.
Yes, especially with the war plans gone … they would have worked as an argument assuming that the other Heads knew enough to think them competent but there would be a lot of number crunching and complicated logistics on the margins, and _that_ stuff not something anyone could just quickly work out.
But if they’re gone, what’s the chance that Taro remembers exactly how many waggon loads of coal and ore they need to get to Gnometown to produce how much iron for how many tanks … basically, if one human can remember those things, then another human will be able to work them out if they just know the outline of the plan.
That’s a decent argument about the Trump presidency. Although there are a lot of hidden variables and hard-to-understand details involved in that, which — if someone wrote a book about it, or made a movie — I would expect to be explained in some way (either based on information I didn’t have at the time or on the author’s favourite hypothesis). Because why would I want to watch a movie about something I didn’t understand when it leaves me just as clueless?