#Gotta love how much Shinon hate there is and yet people love Zelgius?

[dmclemblems]

You know, something that really annoys me is when people say Shinon “betrays” the main group in PoR. That’s not what happened at all. He left because of circumstances involving Greil and Ike and is a mercenary. He gets hired by the commission and fights for pay. Daein was his best shot at getting good pay, and like Sothe also said to Ike, you could rise up in the ranks if you were good enough.

Crimea was the losing the war until Elincia got help from Sanaki. Begnion in general Shinon states to Oscar in their chapter 18 conversation that he would never rise above a middling commission because he was a commoner. His other options were a bunch of racist, beorc hating nations, and he at that time wouldn’t have wanted to work for them either (contrast to RD where Ike tells Ranulf "everyone” in the GMs told him they would rather be there in the Laguz Alliance army).

Daein was just his best shot at good pay. He didn’t do it out of spite for his at the time former comrades. If he did, he would have shot at them without conversing. He wouldn’t have literally given them all the chance to back down from fighting him before he took any shots.

Also the whole “Shinon is racist!” argument falls short of the fact that literally a good chunk of characters were racist in PoR. Soren, Jill, Tibarn, Janaff, Ulki, Naesala, Reyson, Lethe, then there’s entirety of Begnion with very few exceptions as well as Daein with the same problem. And let’s not forget that in RD, Soren is still pretty lowkey distasteful of laguz, even if he’s stated to have gotten better about it (Shinon falling under the same circumstance or god help us he would have left the group again when they got hired by Ranulf). Rafiel also explicitly states he “has doubts” that Elincia is as much of a good beorc as he’s hearing - especially regarding laguz/beorc relations.

Shinon also didn’t have to come back to the GMs at all just because Ike defeated him. He could’ve just said yeah sure great you beat me but I’m still not joining your army full of these beasts bc lol no that’s nasty. He didn’t. He accepted his loss and that Ike could be a commander he worked under, whether it meant fighting alongside laguz or not. People base Shinon entirely around racism and “he’s a jerk” (see: Soren is worse and I love him too), but then they totally ignore everything else and pretend that’s all his character is. Somehow, Rolf learned how to fight...

Funny how everyone loves Soren and hates Shinon even though they’re really not all that different lmao. Shinon just doesn’t like Ike. Other than that they have very similar pessimist attitudes and were both pretty damn racist in PoR (particularly the first half because Shinon gets better in the second half if he’s gotten his A support with Janaff).

Literally like racism is one of the main themes in Tellius and for some reason Shinon ends up taking the worst hit by the fandom for it even though far more major characters were racist too, and some of them didn’t fully overcome it by the end of PoR. And let’s be honest, Tibarn and Reyson were two of the biggest racists in the game. It doesn’t mean they didn’t get better and it doesn’t mean Shinon didn’t get better. He got a lot better - it’s just that people choose to ignore that because they decided they already didn’t like him. Compared to people like Tibarn and co, Shinon’s been implied to have a much worse life. “Reyson was sold by Naesala!” Tibarn wasn’t. Janaff wasn’t. Ulki wasn’t. They were raging and howling about their human hate. Lethe even gave Ike a hard time for quite a while despite him clearly not being racist. On top of it all, Reyson hated humans and blew up about it... even though he was sold by a laguz.

Also, Sephiran? He’ll sit there bitching about racism and shit when you can have an army in frontof him full of a mix of beorc, laguz and Branded. And you can have more than one or two of all of them. Ffs they even had the dragon tribe on their side. ...and somehow Shinon is the worst? Sephiran was ready to help Ashera destroy all beorc and laguz and Branded even though the proof of change was literally right in front of his face.

Let’s not get me started about Naesala and the fact that he’s like still totally racist by the end of PoR and totally not racist anymore and using the term beorc by/before the end of RD because I will defend him too lmao.

I was considering just writing a large post about Shinon like an analysis but I also decided this part of things just needed to finally come out lmao. I love his character and the fact that he’s not perfect and has flaws that he tries to overcome and doesn’t quite completely. I love the fact that he’s a good person with awful flaws that weren’t issues he was confronted with before so it’s hard to overcome them because he’s fucking 27 at the beginning of PoR and long set in his ways. ...yet by the end of RD, he’ll use the word laguz if you A support him with laguz that he gets personalized conversations with (ex. Tibarn and Caineghis).

tl;dr the argument that Shinon is racist and so xyz person hates him is an invalid argument unless, A: you’re going to both hate every single other racist character including strongly Soren (Branded excuse invalid because Stefan is nothing like him and also willingly joins a mostly beorc army and loves laguz), and B: you acknowledge he’s gotten better in his supports with Janaff in PoR and is much better by the end of RD.

And let’s not get me started on the fact that in RD Janaff i.e. a laguz is Shinon’s only optional support bond in RD lmfao (Gatrie and Rolf are built in support bonds and therefore not optional whether you’ve supported them or not in PoR).