Annotated 48-37
FB: Revenge and survival are like comedy. They all depend on…
…timing!
Taro takes the opportunity to deliver a parody of the speech his father made very shortly before Taro killed him. Although it is by now clear that Taro is nowhere near the planner his father was, patience is within his range: it just doesn’t define him the way it defined his father. His claiming otherwise is a balm to soothe his ego after his recent reversals, nothing more. “I am a MASTER planner! THE DAMAGE TO MY TANK AND MY CO-PILOTS FLEEING WERE JUST UNPREDICTABLE VARIABLES!”
Solid alliteration on “Cold-Corpse Keynes,” but can you gnome-name a gnome who already has a gnome name? Is that a thing? I guess it’s the spirit of the insult that counts.
Monologuing about how good he is at waiting for the right opportunity, Taro missed his oppportunity to shot Bandit.
If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
(GNU Terry Pratchett)
Which book is that from?
Also: Highest respect to Terry Pratchett but I would hope that a good *person* would not kill me at all.
I think it’s the nihilists and psychopaths who’d do it without any procedure. Nihilists and psychopaths are the worst.
That is from the book Men at Arms!
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/819071-men-at-arms#:~:text=If%20you%20have%20to%20look,a%20good%20cigar.
Oh wow, I even read that — mere 28 years ago, so I hope I can be forgiven for only remembering Sergeant Detritus–don’t salute!
I believe it is from Men at Arms.
And to answer Charlie Spencer below, I think that yes, Vimes was in the room when this pearl of wisdom was uttered.
Yeah. Hope it’s a good man and it’s a “take prisoners” situation.
Sounds like something Sam Grimes would have said.
Oops, Vimes; typo.
He should have followed the advice of Tuco the Rat from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”:
“If you’re gonna shoot shoot! Don’t talk!”
To be fair, he’s talking as a free action while reloading a single shot weapon that does take a non trivial amount of time to reload. The only reason he doesn’t kill her is because Sundar pops up at the moment just before the trigger is pulled and draws fire.
His real problem was getting up in her face to make the kill shot instead of staying outside her reach
Even not getting so close to her might not have saved him because the moment Sundar popped up there were two opponents, but still just one bullet in his gun. At that point, he could have still killed Bandit, but then what to do about Sundar? Or he could have shown a little patience (ha!) and waited for Sundar to come closer, then shoot him, but that would have given Bandit a chance to get away (which would have been a lot safer to Taro, of course). Really, these old pistols are not particularly great if you need to fire more than one shot.