Tag Archives: Ozar Rokan Memorial Flight Center

Saltation – Chapter 13

Ozar Rokan Memorial Flight Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo loses her temper.

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Wilsmyth’s side is that he clearly hasn’t bothered to learn much about Theo before trying to reel her in. I suspect he has some kind of mental picture of What Junior Students Are Like and has planned his strategy based on how his hypothetical Junior Student would react, instead of taking the time to work out how this particular junior student interacts with the world — with unfortunate results when it turns out that Theo differs from his ideal student in… pretty much every significant respect.

It doesn’t entirely surprise me, since he’s basically trying to pick up Theo as a tool to his own advancement, that he’s not thinking of her as a person with her own viewpoint, but it does kind of surprise me that he doesn’t at least realise what’s likely to happen when he threatens her: he was right there when her reputation for reacting aggressively started. (On the other hand, he was right there and didn’t back down until somebody else pointed out the danger he might be in, so maybe he’s just not very good at spotting what’s going on outside his own head.)

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Theo’s side is that the subtext of the conversation goes straight over her head without her even feeling a breeze. You can tell she hasn’t been raised Liaden: I don’t know if a Liaden her age would have been able to negotiate a graceful exit from the conversation with Wilsmyth so determined to get what he wants, but she would at least have noticed that he was trying politics on her.