Q99 wrote: ↑2018-08-29 12:47am
NecronLord wrote: ↑2018-08-26 06:18am
It's hilarious watching people try to justify the art power as something other than what's in the books. "Maybe he reads intelligence reports and just looks at the art when people are coming in to build mystique" is a fucking treasure.
It's a fucking savant power. This scene is from his own perspective so it cannot be a front - he is not going to lie while reflecting in his own meditation chamber. Provide evidence that his ability is other than presented here or concede.
Good quote.
Even so, he doesn't *only* study the art, he does it in addition to other stuff, and would it kill him to explain the nuances of the art that he reads into it to at least his more mentally flexible subordinates?
Yes. Because the point is that what he can do with reading art is that it isn't something humans can do. His thought processes are alien to us, and thus flag him as nonhuman. Novels aren't TV where the forehead makeup constantly reminds the viewer that the character is an alien, it needs to be built into the character at their core so that the reader knows this character is alien, but doesn't consist of every third word being "alien" or a description of appearance.
I'll also throw to it here that people don't understand Thrawn is not some super amazing wtf always win military genius. Zahn is very clear on that. He make a continual thing that Thrawn wins battles but is terrible at politics or one on one interaction. And while tactical and strategic insight and great logistics are how you win battles, politics is how you win wars. War is politics by other means, the point isn't to win a battle, the point is to force a change in the peaceful status quo that adheres to your interests. You can't always fight, you don't want to always fight, the point is reshaping the peace.
And peace is hard. Making peace is probably harder than making war. Because to establish a peace requires addressing the materiel needs of people and navigating the conflicting interests groups of people have in fulfilling those needs. That's politics.
Thrawn never did that, he didn't even bother. Both the new canon and the old his response to that was the same - massive military occupation force, cruelty, and fear. He would dump tons of soldiers on the ground to force compliance, or do a trick that made people think he could conduct an indefensible orbital bombardment to slaughter them all. That rather than talk he took the expedient of pointing a gun; the "brute application of colonial measures to the metropole" to quote a certain drunken oaf. Zahn showed he came from an expansionist, exploitative, colonial power, he fit right in with the empire using spaarti clones and the like to continue that. Use fear and brute force to stomp folks into the dirt and micromanage to keep them there so a rebellion wouldn't spring up.
And all of this is because Thrawn is above all else an alien space Nazi, and Zahn is good at his job.