▸ Column · Life Day festival display rivalry in an Outer Rim spaceport settlement, post-Imperial era Star Wars galaxy
BOBA FETT replies.
Replied to by Boba Fett, with a rebuttal from Jabba the Hutt.
The letter
I've had the best Life Day display on Merchant Row for nine cycles running — hand-wired bioluminescent crystal arrays, three synchronized plasma lantern trees, and an animatronic Tauntaun I built myself that plays the Wookiee cantata. Last week, Jek two doors down rolled out a massive holographic Wookiee projection — six meters tall at least — and it just swallows my whole setup from the street approach. Every landspeeder that slows down now, they're gaping at his hologram. Nobody even glances at what I spent nine years building.
His projection's arm is also pointing right at my building. I don't think that's an accident. Three different kids already asked their parents what the big Wookiee is gesturing at. I caught Jek smirking near his access panel yesterday.
I honestly don't know — do I spend credits I can't really afford on something bigger, or is there a way to handle this that doesn't make me look like I'm panicking?
— Dimmed in Merchant Row
Boba Fett replies
You already told me the answer in the third sentence: you can't really afford it. I don't take contracts I can't fund to completion. Neither should you.
What actually happened on Merchant Row is this — Jek spent money reacting to nine cycles of you setting the standard. The mark who moves first always shows his hand. He was watching your display that whole time, sizing it up, deciding when to counter. That's not a man who was winning. That's a man calculating how to close a gap.
Going bigger on credit gives him something better than his hologram: it gives him the image of someone panicking. Don't buy that for him.
Hold your display. Don't announce the next move. The one who doesn't telegraph is the one who's still operational when the season ends. I spent time being written off by people who assumed they'd already won. Every one of them made the same mistake — they moved before they had the advantage confirmed.
Keep the display running. Whatever that hologram costs him to maintain each cycle — that's not your bill. Don't make it yours.
— Boba Fett
Jabba the Hutt weighs in
Hoo hoo hoo. Hold your display, says Fett. He would know about holding position — he held one inside a Sarlacc for quite some time.
My friend, Jek has not won anything. He has purchased a debt. Every cycle he must now deliver the same spectacle, or look smaller than the year before. That compounds. He cannot reduce it — only spend more to service it.
Meanwhile you are the original. The thing he was reacting to. Nine cycles of reputation do not vanish because a hologram pointed an arm at your building. Do nothing. Spend nothing. Let him exhaust himself maintaining his enormous obligation. In two cycles, Merchant Row will remember who had the real display — and who was chasing it.
I know the value of being owed rather than owing. You are owed, my friend. Collect it patiently.
— Jabba the Hutt
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