Tuesday, April 6, 2337
Creedmoor, outside Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
New Snowdonia

It was a sunny spring afternoon in Gwynedd County, and in the southeast corner bedroom of Creedmoor, Sir Victor Creed's country house on the heath of the same name, the baronet's two orphaned nieces were hard at their schoolwork, for some values of "hard" and "work".

Laura Kinney sat at her desk, conducting research for an in-class presentation on the fisheries of Great Anglesey. She did not find this subject in any way interesting, but that wasn't preventing her from putting in a good effort; her holonet browser's user interface was piled high with links to all manner of documentation from the New Snowdonia Department of Marine Resources' archive, and she was plowing through it with her accustomed dogged stoicism.

Behind Laura, her "cousin" - enrolled in Philip Wilding Memorial High School under the name Sarah Inazuma, but actually called Azula - lay on her stomach on Laura's neatly made bed, propped up on her elbows with her chin in one hand, reading a slim paperback book. As her amber eyes scanned the pages, she seemed to be getting more and more annoyed about something. Presently she began making little noises of irritation, then derision.

Laura ignored her for a while, then decided to humor her and said, without turning around,

"What."

Azula glanced up from the book. "This Machiavelli person was an imbecile," she said.

Laura remained where she was for a moment, then swiveled in her desk chair and gave Azula a faintly curious look, inviting her to go on without speaking.

"When I was a princess," Azula explained, "I did virtually everything he recommends here, as though they constituted some sort of industry best practice for princes." She illustrated the point by waving the book in the air, then slapping it down on the coverlet in front of her again. "And what did I accomplish? Nothing! The square root of bugger-all, as Mairwen is wont to say." She shook her head disgustedly, opened the book again, and resumed reading. "Either human nature works entirely differently in this 'Italy' place, or this man didn't have the faintest idea what he was writing about."

Laura considered her friend's remarks for a few moments, then turned back to her own work.

"Probably best not to take that line in the classroom discussion tomorrow," she observed dryly.

Azula glanced up at her back, then smirked slightly and went back to reading.

"I suppose not," she agreed. "Ah, well."

"Power Politics" - An Exile Micro-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins
special to the Eyrie Productions Discussion Forum
© 2013 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

While Azula discovering Machiavelli is hilarious, I can't stop snickering at her saying 'The square root of bugger-all.' Ah, the amazing things UF makes possible.

That's because Il Principe was basically Lorenzo de Medici slashfic...

Get that girl some Sun Tzu. :)

>Get that girl some Sun Tzu. :)

Oh, the arguments when they got to Clausewitz. Mairwen and Rhian would just quietly get up and leave the room.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I take it Azula has not yet been appropriately introduced to satire?

Granted, many people who read The Prince never realize that it is satire.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

LAST EDITED ON Dec-02-13 AT 11:01 AM (EST)
 
>I take it Azula has not yet been appropriately introduced to satire?

Unfortunately, Azula at 15 is largely blind to any form of humor more sophisticated than that which would be enjoyed by, say, the average Cimmerian plainsman. It's one of the many unfortunate disfigurements she's been left with by her preposterous upbringing.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-09-13 AT 11:07 PM (EST)
 
OK, for some reason, that makes me imagine Azula learning to understand satire and other sophisticated forms of humour, so that by the time Korra meets her, she's a traveling Stand-Up Comedienne.

"Nah, that can't be her."

"They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on."
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

>OK, for some reason, that makes me imagine Azula learning to
>understand satire and other sophisticated forms of humour, so that by
>the time Korra meets her, she's a traveling Stand-Up Comedienne.

Well, satire and parody overlap (enough that they're essentially interchangeable in common usage), but they are not perfectly coterminous. From Wikipedia:

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually (emphasis mine) meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.

Parody is usually satirical in form, but the humor is usually the main point, rather than criticism. Satire is usually, but not always, humorous, but the criticism is its principle goal. I don't think too many people would characterize The Prince as humorous (I've not read more than bits and pieces, so I can't offer an opinion either way), but even if its satire is missed by many people when it's the only Machiavelli they've read, his other writings make it clear that he did not endorse the style of leadership and ethics it describes; quite the opposite, in fact.

Either way, the point stands: Azula's appreciation of subtlety and irony is at least as lacking as one might expect, given her history.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

Satire also often has the problem that it sometimes just goes right over peoples heads if its subtle enough.

Robocop was a satire. So was Starship Troopers.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>Robocop was a satire. So was Starship Troopers.

I'm sorry, did you just claim that Robocop and Troopers were trying to be subtle?

Matrix Dragon, J. Random Nutter

More like an invocation of Poe's Law, I would think.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>>Robocop was a satire. So was Starship Troopers.
>
>I'm sorry, did you just claim that Robocop and Troopers were trying to
>be subtle?

They were both subtle enough that a lot, I mean a lot a lot, of people fundamentally didn't get the point.

I mean that above and beyond "Is the movie good or not." I've talked to quite a few people who are like "Starship Troopers might have had the potential to be a decent little action movie if it hadn't been so jingoistic, you know?"

-Merc
Keep Rat

>I mean that above and beyond "Is the movie good or not." I've talked
>to quite a few people who are like "Starship Troopers might have had
>the potential to be a decent little action movie if

... if more of the serial numbers had been successfully filed off. Including the title, and the characters' names.

(Sorry, sore point. Heinlein's book is an enjoyable read, but the film as a film of the book was IMHO a dismal failure.)

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-14-13 AT 06:36 PM (EST)
 
>(Sorry, sore point. Heinlein's book is an enjoyable read, but the film
>as a film of the book was IMHO a dismal failure.)

"Dismal failure" doesn't even begin to cover it. It implies that there was an intention to make a film of the book. The interviews with the director seem to indicate that all it was to him was a title and some names.

To be fair though, unless you read Grumbles From the Grave or Expanded Universe, the intentions of Heinlein with Starship Troopers (an "if this goes on...you idiots" scenario and a discussion of the nature of civic virtue) aren't totally clear. Also, RAH left an inconsistency in the book as to the nature of Federal Service which has probably confused people as well:
http://www.nitrosyncretic.com/rah/ftp/fedrlsvc.pdf

Edit: http://www.kentaurus.com/troopers.htm is an excellent discussion in this area.

--
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

Polite disagreement: Starship Troopers was just bad... :)