Ike's Dissonance

[Jotari]

43 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Yeah that is pretty bad. Also, why didn't Sephiran break himself out of jail sooner? He seems to be a very patient fellow, and I can understand why he is patient, but this is bizarre.

And as I pointed out in a different topic, the events of the night of the Serenes Massacre involves 10^100 luck. The forest is set aflame to, Lehran falls into despair and after getting the Medallion comes to the conclusion that Laguz and Beorc are hopeless and Ashera needs to save them from themselves. Afterwards, in what can be no more than a few hours, conceives of using a fairly obscure prince of Daein named Ashnard to break the Medallion's seal. And, for some inexplicable reason, Ashnard is in the vicinity of Serenes, buys into what Lehran tells him, takes the Medallion and then kidnaps Lilia. All of this must unfold within like ~12 hours. 

At the risk of starting a derail, how do we know Ashnard was even on the scene at the time? The only information we get is that the Heron Princess was kidnapped by a "Big Man" and that's second hand from her diary entry. She's probably referring to Ashford but I feel it probably more so means she's being held prisoner by him. As Sephiran was definitely present at the time and she doesn't mention him. As far as I know there's nothing contradicting the idea that Sephiran just delivered her right into Ashnard's hands.

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just now, Jotari said:

At the risk of starting a derail, how do we know Ashnard was even on the scene at the time? The only information we get is that the Heron Princess was kidnapped by a "Big Man" and that's second hand from her diary entry. She's probably referring to Ashford but I feel it probably more so means she's being held prisoner by him. As Sephiran was definitely present at the time and she doesn't mention him. As far as I know there's nothing contradicting the idea that Sephiran just delivered her right into Ashnard's hands.

When I read the text, I realized there was ambiguity in Lilia's description. And given Leanne was put to sleep for 20 years by her fellows Herons and the forest itself, Sephiran could have used his magic to incapacitate Lilia for a long time too.

I think having Sephiran kidnap Lilia is the only reasonable answer. But the new problem here is how did Sephiran not know only his direct Branded descendant could sing and release Yune?

[Jotari]

13 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

When I read the text, I realized there was ambiguity in Lilia's description. And given Leanne was put to sleep for 20 years by her fellows Herons and the forest itself, Sephiran could have used his magic to incapacitate Lilia for a long time too.

I think having Sephiran kidnap Lilia is the only reasonable answer. But the new problem here is how did Sephiran not know only his direct Branded descendant could sing and release Yune?

Even without the incapacitation theory (as likely as it may be) it could even be possible that Lilia just assumed Sephiran was some kind of agent of Ashnard's. Not like these wealthy nobles commonly do the rough work themselves (though in Ashnard's case it is conceivable that he would do dirty work himself but Lillia wouldn't know that).

[Augestein]

4 hours ago, fangpoint333 said:

It is dumb luck because Leif had absolutely no idea that it would happen and it happened at the perfect time. Not dumb luck would have been Leif finding out that another group would be attacking to free the prison soon and letting himself get captured to avoid a fight he couldn't win and taking that risk.

I think you mean Nils. And like I stated before he had no idea where his sister was. He didn't know if she escaped to safety or got caught again. He had no clue on the situation and acted on a feeling. Ike's bad feeling made more sense because Greil was acting out of character ever since seeing the Black Knight. He had observed that something was wrong and acted on it. Nils just had a feeling despite being isolated from all other information. There's a difference. 

Like I said before the distance between Etruria and Lycia is huge. A lot of things could have gone wrong between sending the message and for them to arrive. There's a big difference in between that and hoping one of your fellow mercenaries happens to be nearby to help with an incident happening nearby your base.

The difference between Ike and Sothe's quality as bodyguards is obviously dependent on their relationship with the one that they protect. Ike takes a more active role since Elincia isn't capable of standing up for herself. Sothe doesn't do that as much because Micaiah is more headstrong and doesn't follow his advice.

It isn't. It's a lot easier to stand up for someone when they being attacked. People can do that reflexively. People don't easily join up with their friends when they're calling someone else out that they may not feel as strongly about. Here's a simple comparison. You seeing people picking on your friend. Most people would help out regardless of the risk because you want to protect your friend. You see your friend picking a fight with someone else over something you don't feel as strongly about as they do. You don't just jump in and ganging up on the other person. People act differently when they're trying to protect someone vs. when they're on the aggressor's side. I don't know how this is a hard concept to grasp.

It's not dumb luck though. Again, dumb luck requires that someone just felt like prison breaking with nothing surrounding the plot to encourage anyone to do so. Leif being here in prison when there was a prison break happening means that there's more people in the world doing things besides himself. It's fortuitous, but it's not dumb luck. Dumb luck requires it to happen by random chance. As in, there's no reason for this to happen. 

No. I mean Elbert. Nils knows Elbert is there. He rescued them as well. And considering that both of the twins seem to be able to have feelings to predict when bad things are happening, this isn't that bad-- you can say the powers are bad but that's another thing entirely. The twins do have that power, we see this as early as Ninian predicting an arrow before it even happens. Considering this, it's not a stretch by any means. So no, there really isn't a difference here. 

And that's a really bad argument. "Things could go wrong, so it's luck that someone delivers a message?" You may as well say that it's luck that Ike doesn't trip over his own shoes and impale himself. That's calling into the competence of someone delivering a message or not. Or question why the boat didn't sink from the journey of Crimea to Begnion. Or why no one died from famine or sickness.

And? That doesn't suddenly mean that Ike gets a free pass then. 

It's a lot easier to speak when someone has already voiced the argument and chime in. I'm going to have to strongly disagree with that. 

 

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Sephiran being rescued by Ike is lucky from his perspective. I mean some hero comes out of nowhere and saves him with no precedence or action on his part. That is luck plain and simple. I don't see why that needs to be equated to bad writing though. Some people do get lucky. It's only when it's excessive does it become bad writing (and even then if it's intentional if you pull it off. I remember hearing Charles Dickens used a tonne of cosmic coincidences in his books because he observed it as something that happens in real life, and it does happen. Just the other day I randomly selected a person in a new friends phone and it turns out we had a mutual acquaintance. Four degrees of separation discovered on a pure random selection. It was amazing. This is a foreign country for me too so it's not like I know a lot of people either).

 

Sephrian being in prison is less lucky than you might think honestly.

Considering that Nasir is the worm of the group, and works for Daein, and Sephiran is supposedly manipulating events in Daein with the BK, and manipulating Ashnard himself, Sephiran can have a general idea of where and what Elincia's group is planning on doing. It's possible that he got himself arrested on purpose. Look at it this way, Sephiran absolutely needed to ensure that Elincia made it to Begnion in order to petition for aide. If Elincia were to die before that, there wouldn't be any real way to incite a war that would involve the whole continent as easily. And if you'll notice, the only reason that the group go to Begnion was because Sephiran stopped the BK from pursuing them. While he didn't need to be jailed to do this, it does make it considerably easier to be in the proximity of them if you recently got rescued by them.  

People are a little too quick to say "bad writing" around here. I'm gonna dip, because people are dragging these arguments in very bizarre directions. 

I agree. It's literally what my beef is with Ike. There's a little too much plot convenience. This is what I've been saying from the start. A little bit of convenience is fine, but Ike has too much luck and things contributed to himself when it's not. Which is what I've been saying for the longest, but continues to be ignored. 

[Baldrick]

6 hours ago, Augestein said:

 

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Considering that Nasir is the worm of the group, and works for Daein, and Sephiran is supposedly manipulating events in Daein with the BK, and manipulating Ashnard himself, Sephiran can have a general idea of where and what Elincia's group is planning on doing. It's possible that he got himself arrested on purpose. Look at it this way, Sephiran absolutely needed to ensure that Elincia made it to Begnion in order to petition for aide. If Elincia were to die before that, there wouldn't be any real way to incite a war that would involve the whole continent as easily. And if you'll notice, the only reason that the group go to Begnion was because Sephiran stopped the BK from pursuing them. While he didn't need to be jailed to do this, it does make it considerably easier to be in the proximity of them if you recently got rescued by them.  

People are a little too quick to say "bad writing" around here. I'm gonna dip, because people are dragging these arguments in very bizarre directions. 

I agree. It's literally what my beef is with Ike. There's a little too much plot convenience. This is what I've been saying from the start. A little bit of convenience is fine, but Ike has too much luck and things contributed to himself when it's not. Which is what I've been saying for the longest, but continues to be ignored. 

 

Nasir hadn't joined them at that point. They go to the prison camp on an offhand suggestion from Ranulf, so it's hard to believe Sephiran anticipated that. He was already ostensibly on a pilgrimage, so letting himself be captured was just for giggles.

There's plenty of rebuttals for you to respond to. We've already established Sanaki's reasons for using Ike to expose the slave trade were actually good. Other people have noted Kurthnaga's reasons for being lenient, and I'll add that it's not the first time Goldoa has been bothered by Kilvas.

Edited July 2, 2017 by David Boey

[Augestein]

5 hours ago, David Boey said:

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Nasir hadn't joined them at that point. They go to the prison camp on an offhand suggestion from Ranulf, so it's hard to believe Sephiran anticipated that. He was already ostensibly on a pilgrimage, so letting himself be captured was just for giggles.

There's plenty of rebuttals for you to respond to. We've already established Sanaki's reasons for using Ike to expose the slave trade were actually good. Other people have noted Kurthnaga's reasons for being lenient, and I'll add that it's not the first time Goldoa has been bothered by Kilvas.

Sure, but considering that Sephiran was trying to keep tabs on them, it makes sense for him to be over there. It's not random. Sanaki says that he was trying to find out about the situation in Chapter 14. And the reason it doesn't matter if Nasir is picked up later is because... He's Daein's worm-- and by extension Sephiran's since he has BK as his own right hand man. As for rebuttals, people only called the character in question: which is what I was talking about was convenient. The examples some people are giving here aren't convenience, but rather... Just other people existing in the world and having initiative. 

[fangpoint333]

13 hours ago, Augestein said:

It's not dumb luck though. Again, dumb luck requires that someone just felt like prison breaking with nothing surrounding the plot to encourage anyone to do so. Leif being here in prison when there was a prison break happening means that there's more people in the world doing things besides himself. It's fortuitous, but it's not dumb luck. Dumb luck requires it to happen by random chance. As in, there's no reason for this to happen. 

No. I mean Elbert. Nils knows Elbert is there. He rescued them as well. And considering that both of the twins seem to be able to have feelings to predict when bad things are happening, this isn't that bad-- you can say the powers are bad but that's another thing entirely. The twins do have that power, we see this as early as Ninian predicting an arrow before it even happens. Considering this, it's not a stretch by any means. So no, there really isn't a difference here. 

And that's a really bad argument. "Things could go wrong, so it's luck that someone delivers a message?" You may as well say that it's luck that Ike doesn't trip over his own shoes and impale himself. That's calling into the competence of someone delivering a message or not. Or question why the boat didn't sink from the journey of Crimea to Begnion. Or why no one died from famine or sickness.

And? That doesn't suddenly mean that Ike gets a free pass then. 

It's a lot easier to speak when someone has already voiced the argument and chime in. I'm going to have to strongly disagree with that. 

 

Sephrian being in prison is less lucky than you might think honestly.

It is random chance that the rescue happens to align up with Leif's capture. It's nothing but random chance. He had no influence on the outcome or knowledge of the incident. Hence DUMB luck.

Elbert. He does have a reason to be there. Elbert isn't with him.

I'm pretty sure you meant Nils in one part of this post. Saying Elbert isn't with Elbert is literal nonsense. NIls can predict bad things happening but he's never been the type to take action on it. Prior to that the twins have just ran away from their problems. He knows there's nothing he can do against Nergal and his minions and the only time he ever decides to run up and confront the problem by himself is at a time when him showing up is exactly when Ninian is trying to bring Dragon's through the gate and can't be interrupted.

There's more to it than that. Roy has to send a messenger through a country that's being invaded into another country. Meet up with someone he currently doesn't know the status of. Then Cecilia has to also convince her king to intervene and mobilize an entire army and then have them manage to travel all the way to Ostia with no problems. The scale of what needs to happen and everything working perfectly when he has so little involvement is what makes it lucky. Ike tripping and dying is something that can be prevented with his own effort and the scale of the issue is so small compared to mobilizing an entire foreign army with a letter.

People don't jump in to bash on someone if they don't feel strongly about the issue. Hector doesn't care as much about Zephiel as Eliwood does, so that's why Eliwood jumps up and Hector doesn't. His response to the whole incident is

Hector:
“It’s over and done with. No sense worrying about it now. "

These aren't the words of somebody who cares. It's a lot easier to get angry when someone is insulting your friend.

There's no point in trying to continue this further. We're going in circles and you clearly hate Ike and want him to die a fiery death at every opportunity if all your examples you pulled off the top of your head were related to him dying.

[Baldrick]

9 hours ago, Augestein said:

Sure, but considering that Sephiran was trying to keep tabs on them, it makes sense for him to be over there. It's not random. Sanaki says that he was trying to find out about the situation in Chapter 14. And the reason it doesn't matter if Nasir is picked up later is because... He's Daein's worm-- and by extension Sephiran's since he has BK as his own right hand man. [/quote]

But how does getting arrested help him keep tabs on Elincia? There's no way he could know they would go to the prison. If Nasir is his source, he can only know their movements once they meet up with Nasir.

As for rebuttals, people only called the character in question: which is what I was talking about was convenient. The examples some people are giving here aren't convenience, but rather... Just other people existing in the world and having initiative.

I don't see any difference between the Magi Group existing and having initiative and Kurth/Sanaki existing and having initiative.

@fangpoint333; I don't disagree with your assessment, but you shouldn't get frustrated. If there's an impasse, so be it.