First off, Latho is probably completely correct in the assumption that the Queen feels like her side has won. That “Fufufufu”-type of laughing, understood to be an upperclass-type of laughing in an anime/manga context, is a clear sign of a feeling of superiority. Which, of course, normally could simply be the consequence of her high social rank and being brought up in it…but only if she was an evil Queen. Since she isn’t (or at least isn’t anymore) she can be expected to be free of such fundamental prejudices, so this burst of laughter is definitely situational.
But, perhaps unexpectedly, Latho doesn’t fold at that – but rather launches a counterattack on his own. In the Information Domain, no less! Which clearly demonstrates that he’s hip and with it, as far as doctrine is concerned. Which you would kinda expect, though, given his age…he’s not only been around before firearms, he was around before fire, so he clearly had to update his fighting methods numerous times over the millennia.
So right now he’s fighting back in the Information Domain. Which immediately reveals one of the main problems when it comes to the visual depiction of this novel category of warfighting: it sounds a lot more exciting than it looks. Which is part of a more general pattern that’s causing a problem for visual media: most activities look the same, these days, and not very exciting at that. B-movies at least profit from a side-effect of that, which is the vastly increased reclyclability of stock footage: footage of a guy typing on a phone or keyboard can be interpreted as somebody talking to his friends, an accountant working on spreadsheets, a cyber criminal stealing some credentials, a doctor writing a diagnosis, a spy delivering intelligence to his superiors, etc. etc. ad infinitum – all of that looks exactly the same on the outside.
And not only is it visually uninteresting, it’s also quite time-consuming – and I felt it would have to be wrong to gloss this fact over with a sharp cut. Instead I decided on a lampshade…and who better to provide that than Latho itself, in his earlier guise as Plushy-Patton? Well, any number of characters, honestly, if not even the majority. But I decided on Plushy-Patton, so there you go.
More on Thursday.