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Favourite Begnion Senator


Icelerate
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Favourite Begnion Senator  

21 members have voted

  1. 1. Who is your personal favourite?

  2. 2. Least evil senator?

    • Hetzel
    • Sephiran
    • Oliver
    • Lekain
      0
    • Numida
      0
    • Valtome
      0
  3. 3. Most evil senator?

  4. 4. Least Favorite Senator?



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Hetzel for being a nice case of a villain who has no big sob story but is simply on the side of evil because of a very simple human flaw.

Not to mention that these days, as a technically moral person who ignores the heinous acts around him, it's interesting just how different he is treated by the narrative compared to more recent characters like Corrin.

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10 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Hetzel for being a nice case of a villain who has no big sob story but is simply on the side of evil because of a very simple human flaw.

Not to mention that these days, as a technically moral person who ignores the heinous acts around him, it's interesting just how different he is treated by the narrative compared to more recent characters like Corrin.

Hetzel had no good reason to switch sides. Before he was a high ranking member of the most powerful kingdom on the continent. Later he was chosen and revived by the goddess herself. He was a cowardly old man, yes. But his circumstances make him forgivable.This type of character is especially refreshing in a series that struggles with nuance. 

Honestly, it's just cool to hate Corrin. Fates' plot issues aren't even his fault, and Birthright Corrin is better lord than most others. Maybe it'll die down and get passed on when some poor new guy comes along. It did for Micaiah. People hated her back in the day, now she's got more fans than ever.

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I answered Sephiran-Hetzel-Lekain.

Why no choice for least favorite Senator? 

Numida is filler and has no character, but I find him less offensive than Oliver and Valtome.

Oliver was fine in PoR, RD's intentional memefication of him is detestable. This is a man who relished in owing slaves- why joke about him?

Valtome, he screams blatant evil with no attempt to conceal it. The way he behaves in front of Elincia at the end of 3-9 is brainless, he is just arrogant and in no way diplomatic, geez, no wonder she turned against you when you threaten to take her throne right in front of her in her own castle! He is also effeminate, the hair is fine as a period hairstyle, but the personality is PoR Oliver made worse and it really didn't have to be so for any real reason. Lastly, as a personal nitpick he has the same laugh as :kefka:, but I find Valtome deserves it not at all, he disgraces the almighty :kefka:! I leave the game running for a few minutes after 3-10 when Zelgius is holding him in the air just to pettily watch his feet struggle.

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14 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

 

Oliver was fine in PoR, RD's intentional memefication of him is detestable. This is a man who relished in owing slaves- why joke about him?

image.png

To be fair, he didn't want them for labor or sex. Oliver really isn't a bad person,  he's just slightly insane and obsessed with beauty. I don't know if IS knew Oliver was popular when they were making Radiant Dawn. He could have been planned like that from the beginning. 

 

 

image.png

Bask in it.

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1 minute ago, Køkø said:

Bask in it.

Only if I can turn him horizontally, tie him to a stick, and put him over a bonfire. I will never forget Reyson referring to him as "a wretched sack of lard!".

I will concede the resounding splendors of Beauty is a Mad Mistress though. That is somehow infectious.

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9 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Only if I can turn him horizontally, tie him to a stick, and put him over a bonfire. I will never forget Reyson referring to him as "a wretched sack of lard!".

I will concede the resounding splendors of Beauty is a Mad Mistress though. That is somehow infectious.

Blasphemy! Reyson was likely more upset at the situation rather than the pinnacle of beauty himself. He would never do anything to harm the herons. Though Reyson does nearly break his hand on his beautiful face. His quotes in Heroes are bizarrely uplifting as well. 

At least you can feel his glory through his theme song.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

image.png

One last time. Couldn't resist. 

Edited by Køkø
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14 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I answered Sephiran-Hetzel-Lekain.

Why no choice for least favorite Senator? 

Oliver was fine in PoR, RD's intentional memefication of him is detestable. This is a man who relished in owing slaves- why joke about him?

 

I knew you'd pick Sephiran. 

I added a choice now, you may vote again. 

But turning Oliver into a meme isn't as bad as making Sephiran into a hero. 

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Ignoring our lord and savior Oliver for a bit

I really like Lekain. I find him to be a very balanced character who manages to keep enough of the typical Senatorial haughtiness to be amusing while still coming off as very cunning, threatening and serious. That Lekain eventually loses his relevancy from other villains doesn't detract from his very solid run as the most prominent villain and that he's the one who caused Lehrans corruption only enchances his stature.
Lekain is also very down to earth. He's just a corrupt politician who just has the lowly goals of a corrupt politician and nothing more. He doesn't have an ideology, doesn't want to destroy the world, doesn't worship a mad dragon and he doesn;t even want to take over the world. 


And then there's Hetzel who's very balanced in his own rights. He's a ''good'' man who's to weak to do the right thing but the story avoids taking this to either extreme. He's not instantly forgiven and whitewassed like Corrin, instead his good nature makes people like Reyson and Sanaki very dissapointed in him but despite selling out the world because of his cowardice its not like he's depicted as the king of Grust who did the same except has never been anything else but a scumbag for it. 
Because Hetzel gets both the good and the bad traits that his behavior would bring he's more sympathic then he would be if they kept insisting he was a saint or just a dirty coward.

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9 hours ago, Icelerate said:

But turning Oliver into a meme isn't as bad as making Sephiran into a hero. 

Well he was a hero, in the past, before the Serenes Massacre. He is more or less mentally insane at this point.

You are supposed to empathize (meaning understand, not agree) with Sephiran's suffering, to lament that a person of such talent could fall so far, but you are not to actually agree with what he is doing. If RD was trying to push "let Ashera petrify everyone" as being the right thing to do or at least equal in merit to killing Sephiran and Ashera, why not give Ike and Micaiah the choice to agree to it? 

Sephiran, if saved from death, overcomes his insanity and sees that he was wrong. He was conscious enough in his insanity that in a court of law he could not plead insanity defense. Ike would have let him die, but opts to spare him thinking it will punish him more than death:

Spoiler

Ike:
“Why did you save him?”

Yune:
“Should I not have?”

Ike:
“I can think of a few reasons why you shouldn’t have, yes!”

(Ike moves towards Sephiran)

Ike:
“Hey! Get up. Now.”

Yune:
“Take it easy on him! He’s had a hard day!”

Sephiran:
“…ung… …hhhuuunnn…. I… I’m alive?”

Yune:
“Lehran!”

Sephiran:
“Goddess Yune… Why? Why did you–“

Yune:
“Because I want you to live! You’ve always taken care of me, and I couldn’t bear it if it ended like this.”

Sephiran:
“But…I’ve lost all my hope. All hope in the world and the people in it… I did what I did…for future generations, so they wouldn’t have to live in this world. Please, Yune, let me die.”

Yune:
“I won’t, Lehran. I won’t!”

Ike:
“Lehran? Now he’s some kind of hero-saint?”

Sephiran:
“…”

Ike:
“If death is what you really want, then I’m not going to let it happen on my watch. I don’t care what you’ve gone through. I don’t care how much you’ve suffered. What you’ve done is unforgivable.”

Yune:
“Stop it, Ike!”

Sephiran:
“…”

Ike:
“Ashera is waiting. It’s time for the final confrontation with her. You can come… If you want to.”

Sephiran:
“You… You’re asking me to turn my back on goddess Ashera?”

Ike:
“If you really want the total extinction of beorc and laguz alike, then you can just lie here like a lump. If not, this is your last chance to start rectifying your mistakes. Think hard on that.”

Now Ike might be a little alone on this matter, Yune clearly disagreed. Sephiran did help out in the final fight, and I would like to think he did a lot of community service in the hundreds of years that followed, even if we aren't told it. Ashunera then returns and he presumably does a good perfectly sane job as her right hand again for however much longer he lives for thanks to those blessings, which could be hundreds or thousands more years. I think that is enough time to work off sentences for 1st degree murder for ~250000 people (we don't actually know how many were killed between PoR and RD, I'm just doing a very loose guestimation from what few military numbers we get), related property damages, plus an indirect role in the genocide of Phoenicis and Goldoa and the unique charge of "trying to kill everyone by awakening a goddess".

Of course, you might believe in the death penalty. Fair enough. At the least the game forces Sephiran dead on the 1st run and gives you the option of leaving him to easily die on every subsequent run. Of course, the canonical version of events would be that which is most like a "Golden Ending" in all likelihood, which would means he lives. Which you have the right to criticize.

 

I glimpsed you one time using a Nazi comparison with him. LAZY! I say! Do NOT invoke them unless it seriously applies, and here, it does NOT!

Hitler was disgustingly anti-Semitic, racist, hateful, and an irrational ideologue since his days in Vienna as a failed watercolor artist. Never did Sephiran display any of those traits.

To the end, Hitler didn't regret his choices to invade practically all of Europe, to take the lives of 6 million Jews, to genocide another 6 million more, and to kill many others in World War II and the stuff he did in Germany beforehand.

Sephiran, to the end, although he did not turn back from his plans to turn everyone to stone, harbored regrets as meaningless as they are, about what he was doing. He loved the world, he just felt there was too much suffering in it and that Ashera when she finally awoke was going to turn everyone to stone anyhow. So if life as is in Tellius is terrible, and it is all going to die anyhow, why not give the terminal patient euthanasia? He was insane from despair, that is not a good thing, his plans were not good, but there is an element of genuine love, twisted, but present, in his schemes.

Hitler had no true kernel of goodness in his goals. He just hated and wanted to conquer the world in the name of his illogical racialist theories that in practice lacked as much as definite definition as to what constituted a German. The Lebensraum notion of a crowded German people bursting at the seams to expand fell apart as soon as he had Poland and Czechoslovakia in his control, and realized he needed non-Germans peoples to run war industries because, surprise! Germany in a constant state of war didn't have enough German people to occupy their short sought Lebensraum at all!

Long story short- pick your choice of metaphors more carefully, or don't use them at all. You don't need them to express why you dislike a character, I'm fine with someone disliking Sephiran, but please avoid sloppy language like that. That was the trigger of this landslide.

P.S.

I believe the exact comment of yours with the Hitler comparison I saw involved Sephiran wanting to kill everyone vs. Hitler killing just some millions. And let me counter with this: what real dictator has ever wanted to kill the world? None.

Killing everyone is the stuff of fictional villains, and serial killers who would want to can't actually get into a position of power to do that. Hitler didn't want to kill everyone, Mussolini didn't, Stalin didn't, Castro didn't, Mao didn't, Latin American and African dictators haven't, the Kims of North Korea haven't either, nor any other one- they want to live their sweet lives on the totalitarian top you know? Why die early?

 

Now, let me take a deep breath. :-_-:

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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On 2/12/2018 at 9:08 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Well he was a hero, in the past, before the Serenes Massacre. He is more or less mentally insane at this point.

You are supposed to empathize (meaning understand, not agree) with Sephiran's suffering, to lament that a person of such talent could fall so far, but you are not to actually agree with what he is doing. If RD was trying to push "let Ashera petrify everyone" as being the right thing to do or at least equal in merit to killing Sephiran and Ashera, why not give Ike and Micaiah the choice to agree to it? 

Sephiran, if saved from death, overcomes his insanity and sees that he was wrong. He was conscious enough in his insanity that in a court of law he could not plead insanity defense. Ike would have let him die, but opts to spare him thinking it will punish him more than death:

  Reveal hidden contents

Ike:
“Why did you save him?”

Yune:
“Should I not have?”

Ike:
“I can think of a few reasons why you shouldn’t have, yes!”

(Ike moves towards Sephiran)

Ike:
“Hey! Get up. Now.”

Yune:
“Take it easy on him! He’s had a hard day!”

Sephiran:
“…ung… …hhhuuunnn…. I… I’m alive?”

Yune:
“Lehran!”

Sephiran:
“Goddess Yune… Why? Why did you–“

Yune:
“Because I want you to live! You’ve always taken care of me, and I couldn’t bear it if it ended like this.”

Sephiran:
“But…I’ve lost all my hope. All hope in the world and the people in it… I did what I did…for future generations, so they wouldn’t have to live in this world. Please, Yune, let me die.”

Yune:
“I won’t, Lehran. I won’t!”

Ike:
“Lehran? Now he’s some kind of hero-saint?”

Sephiran:
“…”

Ike:
“If death is what you really want, then I’m not going to let it happen on my watch. I don’t care what you’ve gone through. I don’t care how much you’ve suffered. What you’ve done is unforgivable.”

Yune:
“Stop it, Ike!”

Sephiran:
“…”

Ike:
“Ashera is waiting. It’s time for the final confrontation with her. You can come… If you want to.”

Sephiran:
“You… You’re asking me to turn my back on goddess Ashera?”

Ike:
“If you really want the total extinction of beorc and laguz alike, then you can just lie here like a lump. If not, this is your last chance to start rectifying your mistakes. Think hard on that.”

Now Ike might be a little alone on this matter, Yune clearly disagreed. Sephiran did help out in the final fight, and I would like to think he did a lot of community service in the hundreds of years that followed, even if we aren't told it. Ashunera then returns and he presumably does a good perfectly sane job as her right hand again for however much longer he lives for thanks to those blessings, which could be hundreds or thousands more years. I think that is enough time to work off sentences for 1st degree murder for ~250000 people (we don't actually know how many were killed between PoR and RD, I'm just doing a very loose guestimation from what few military numbers we get), related property damages, plus an indirect role in the genocide of Phoenicis and Goldoa and the unique charge of "trying to kill everyone by awakening a goddess".

Of course, you might believe in the death penalty. Fair enough. At the least the game forces Sephiran dead on the 1st run and gives you the option of leaving him to easily die on every subsequent run. Of course, the canonical version of events would be that which is most like a "Golden Ending" in all likelihood, which would means he lives. Which you have the right to criticize.

 

I glimpsed you one time using a Nazi comparison with him. LAZY! I say! Do NOT invoke them unless it seriously applies, and here, it does NOT!

Hitler was disgustingly anti-Semitic, racist, hateful, and an irrational ideologue since his days in Vienna as a failed watercolor artist. Never did Sephiran display any of those traits.

To the end, Hitler didn't regret his choices to invade practically all of Europe, to take the lives of 6 million Jews, to genocide another 6 million more, and to kill many others in World War II and the stuff he did in Germany beforehand.

Sephiran, to the end, although he did not turn back from his plans to turn everyone to stone, harbored regrets as meaningless as they are, about what he was doing. He loved the world, he just felt there was too much suffering in it and that Ashera when she finally awoke was going to turn everyone to stone anyhow. So if life as is in Tellius is terrible, and it is all going to die anyhow, why not give the terminal patient euthanasia? He was insane from despair, that is not a good thing, his plans were not good, but there is an element of genuine love, twisted, but present, in his schemes.

Hitler had no true kernel of goodness in his goals. He just hated and wanted to conquer the world in the name of his illogical racialist theories that in practice lacked as much as definite definition as to what constituted a German. The Lebensraum notion of a crowded German people bursting at the seams to expand fell apart as soon as he had Poland and Czechoslovakia in his control, and realized he needed non-Germans peoples to run war industries because, surprise! Germany in a constant state of war didn't have enough German people to occupy their short sought Lebensraum at all!

Long story short- pick your choice of metaphors more carefully, or don't use them at all. You don't need them to express why you dislike a character, I'm fine with someone disliking Sephiran, but please avoid sloppy language like that. That was the trigger of this landslide.

P.S.

I believe the exact comment of yours with the Hitler comparison I saw involved Sephiran wanting to kill everyone vs. Hitler killing just some millions. And let me counter with this: what real dictator has ever wanted to kill the world? None.

Killing everyone is the stuff of fictional villains, and serial killers who would want to can't actually get into a position of power to do that. Hitler didn't want to kill everyone, Mussolini didn't, Stalin didn't, Castro didn't, Mao didn't, Latin American and African dictators haven't, the Kims of North Korea haven't either, nor any other one- they want to live their sweet lives on the totalitarian top you know? Why die early?

 

Now, let me take a deep breath. :-_-:

I've always found it a missed opportunity that Tibarn and Skrimir don't back Ike up when in the tower. It would have been interesting to see non Ike characters get more dialogue in the tower. 

It looks like I hit a nerve with a post a while back. I made a mistake with that post because my intention wasn't to say Sephiran is more evil than Hitler, just that the gravity of his actions are very grave in spite of his good intentions, kind heart and gentle soul. However, my post didn't come across as intended. The reason why justice should be enacted is to deter criminals so if citizens of Tellius see people like Sephiran get away, it might make some criminals think they can get away with much smaller crimes. But I don't dislike Sephiran because after thinking about it more deeply, one of the themes of the game is forgiveness so I think he fits the theme of sin and redemption very well. Also, having Sephiran survive means that I have a counterargument against people who think Micaiah didn't deserve a happy ending and that it is plot favoritism to ignore her acts in part three. 

But here my point was that Oliver is a very inoffensive villain compared to most including Sephiran IMO. Even a few hundred years ago, many people used to own slaves and most didn't treat them as well as Oliver. Owning slaves isn't anywhere near as bad as killing innocent people and if you want to bring Sephiran's good intentions into this, Oliver also had good intentions as he wanted to protect the herons. Granted, Sephiran has a lot of heroic qualities to boot in comparison to Oliver such as selflessness which Oliver lacks. 

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Personally, I find every one of the senators a detestable sack of excrement and would gladly send every one of them to their death. Which is ironic, in that sort of wrathfulness is a human flaw. Like the greed, the pride, the lust for power, the selfishness, and everything else that has made the senators sin. Thus, despite my feelings, I make sure that I spare Oliver and Seriphan. Because elsewise I'd just be descending to their level.

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