Annotated 47-5
FB: Sharxit.
I appreciate that Penk’s political skill has not deserted him through this exchange. He’s tried to challenge land shark pride (“Why do you flee like minnows?”) and used Hammerhead’s own words against him (“Have I not been proven strongest and loudest?”). Having gotten nowhere this way, he tries the “You and I are misfits, let’s be misfits together” argument. That old chestnut has kept a lot of adventuring parties together.
It doesn’t work here…Hammerhead’s logic is strong, his pride is still wounded, and his philosophy is unshakable. But it may be the best effort Penk could have made. This will be the last conversation Hammerhead has, for a long time and maybe forever, with anyone of any race who can string together a sentence the way he can. However angry he is with Penk…and he is certainly angry, no question about that…that’s a lot to give up.
I mean, he’s not wrong either. He’s already been caged for his worldview. Having witnessed Harky stick to a similar worldview and Penk responding by caving his skull in, Hammerhead knows that likewise there’s no way his own relationship with Penk can end in anything other than one killing the other. The fact that he instead LEAVES, in an odd way, shows how much he doesn’t want Penk to die.
Changing your mind is difficult when you’ve based your entire concept of yourself around being the only person around with two braincells and always knowing better. Hammerhead cannot actually *learn* without stopping *being* Hammerhead.
Yep. I bet there’s a big component of disappointment thee for Hammerhead. He is by far the strongest, loudest *and* smartest of the landsharks, and he tried using that strength to the advantage of his people, but it turns out he’s now the least smart of the Champions, and their words don’t rime with his words, and things don’t make sense to him anymore.
That’s a frequent frustration when someone goes from their local school to university and from being pretty good at their subject to having trouble keeping up (because everyone else there was at least “pretty good”, and some of their schools/teachers had higher standards than others…). Unfortunately, Hammerhead’s goal was not to learn as much as possible, and so he’s not able/willing to keep up with all the reasoning in the Rebellion. But he also has way too much pride to deal with the frustration and work it out, or to just follow the decisions of others if they don’t match his own understanding. Which I can get, because where he’s from, he’s never had to back down in any argument, and he got far.
And so, sadly, he decides to stop trying and abandon his verbal skills.
I get a little more respect for Hammerhead’s worldview here. He has a problem with making prey into friends, but is also worried that friends could then be made prey. Perhaps one thing that Penk has been missing in his approach is a promise of land shark safety. Although I doubt he would have won over Hammerhead anyway.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any form of “as long as your predatory and near-mindless people can be directed to not attack any of the sapient races we’re going to try to bring into the coalition…which, given enough time, will be all of them…we won’t attack you either!” that Hammerhead would have found better than a threat wrapped in an insult.
High-falutin’ oratory can solve a lot of problems. But it leaves behind words and ideas that others may view with a different perspective!
Hammerhead is wrong because he doesn’t understand troll society. He’s acting as if Penk murdered Harky, when it was actually a consensual matter of succession.
It makes sense that he wonders whether Penk will kill him next. But it only makes sense because, despite being the smartest land-shark, able to restrain his frenzy, able to work with others… he is still short-sighted by our standards.
And yet he’s more tolerant than many Gastonians, and some people of other races.
Yep. It’s sad that he can’t keep up with the mental/ethical standard, but it’s actually good that he decides to leave rather than start a carnage right there and then.
I bet he could actually hang on if he set his mind to it, but going into a discussion with the assumption that there’s something you don’t understand is *hard*, even for almost all humans, and Hammerhead is certainly not a rule-taker by nature…
So it’s actually extremely considerate that he decides to leave with his bunch rather than start a carnage right then and there. I hope his frustration doesn’t undo what he did learn during his time as a Champion.
I wish there was a similarly respectful way of dealing with “too old-school to understand, too proud to try”-kind of people in real life, who see social and ethical progress as an attack on their values and can’t muster the will to understand why what was generally accepted 30 years ago is not generally accepted anymore, but if you can’t just more-or-less amicably part ways and not affect each others’ lives if you keep living in the same country/society. Although I guess sometimes letting a discussion/confrontation end without definite result might still be an overall good idea.
The thing that I don’t understand is, to the extent that people harboring “unfashionable” old-school views aren’t actively harming anyone, why do we fret about them at all? They’re just another culture, not long for the world. Why not leave them in peace, ignore them, and move on?
Because sometimes, after years of “not hurting anyone,” they end up electing presidents and corrupting supreme courts.
I know, I know…that’s not what you meant. But I used to think the same about people with views I considered outdated until those events and others showed me otherwise: “outdated” ideologies have a way of resurging when times get hard and fearful.
To keep things on topic, I think Penk is right to be conciliatory here. As others have pointed out, Hammerhead could’ve done things a lot more aggressively than marching his people out at sunrise and leaving rations behind. He’s someone whom reason can reach. The same may not be true for his successor, and that might be a problem for Penk’s coalition down the line. Hopefully, by then, it will be strong enough to deal with that problem.