Masterful Considerations – Chapter 9, Act 1, Strip 52

Mori-senpai definitely left a lasting impact on Gregory-kun. His message is clearly still resonating with him, although the method of delivery seems to exert a certain amount of halo effect. And it’s quite possible that Gregory-kun wouldn’t have been able to recall the message so clearly if Mori-senpai’s lips wouldn’t feature that prominently in his memories…so perhaps the key to successful messaging is just having luscious, incredibly soft looking lips?

And I don’t think that Mori-senpai is unduly hamstringing the whole effort by decreeing that only a drunken master is an acceptable replacement for a coach – after all, some drunken masters are among the very best coaches that fiction has to offer. Likely not the kind of drunk the team is bound to end up with, but still…there would be potential there.

Obi Wan’s state of intoxication is a complex subject, well summed up by Snuka here: He was never shown to drink heavily, and he probably wasn’t supposed to do it as a Jedi master…but a lot of the things he did and said would just be a whole lot easier to explain with the assumption that his mental facilities were impaired in some way. Of course, some people might argue that the Jedi creed in itself would be enough of a mental impairment, if truly believed in, so perhaps we don’t have to look for an external source of impairment.

But no matter the source of the impairment, putting him at the very bottom of the list seems fundamentally right. Now the team can only hope they can fill up the list with other unsuitable candidates so they won’t have to fall back on Obi. And, yeah, they can only hope to fill it with unsuitable candidates…based on bitter experiences, the whole team’s capacity for hope is so constrained that they couldn’t possibly muster enough hopefulness to angle for suitable candidates. I mean, let’s be realistic.

So they move right on to the next candidate who’s clearly unsuitable: DM, the only past master they all share. And as Biff correctly points out, the fact that DM is an unfathomably evil, sadistic demonic creature does not mean that he couldn’t be a good coach for a sports team – some of the most successful coaches in history have roughly matched that description. But K’ip’s objection seems valid – it’s quite possible that DM might still be holding a bit of a grudge over the whole getting-tricked-into-committing-suicide-in-the-most-gory-way-imaginable thing. I know I would. It’s a moot point, though, since DM has clearly taken up a sea-faring career in the meantime, or more precisely a piratical one. Which all of the body parts he’s missing, that was kind of an obvious choice, wasn’t it?

More on Thursday.