#shinon

Tellius characters are flawed, and Shinon is just hated for "being a racist" because he doesn't turn into a happy, sweet, soft person just because he met a few good laguz. Beorc have different lifespans than laguz, for one thing, so 27 years old is pretty far into life as far as habits go. At 27, you just don't break out of habits overnight. Just because he had a good conversation with Janaff and changed his mind doesn't mean he's gonna whip out a whole new personality in a single day.

Tellius characters are also very complex. They're not hampered by a single trait. There are more traits to these characters that make them feel real. You can't praise Jill for getting better as a person while going out of your way to intentionally ignore another character. You can dislike a character, certainly, but identifying your reason for hating them as being something that also applies to a favorite of yours just proves that you're looking excuses to hate a character, rather than actually hating that character.

Soren also... never really gets better. He tolerates laguz for Ike. Not because he personally got better. Even in RD, he's still hesitant and Ike has to scold him for not wanting to help Ranulf, who had been the kindest laguz they'd ever met. Soren gets a pass because he's the "gay twink", but he's worse than Shinon ever was.

If you remember, Soren actually raised a weapon to Lethe and Mordecai and had intent to attack them. Granted, yes, Lethe provoked him and he was in the right to get pissed off (though not in the right to attack Mordecai who didn't even say all that shit and was being so sweet the whole time). But you can't look at that and then look at Shinon, who had a dumb as hell petty argument with Janaff, where he insisted he could win a fight against him and then pulled back and went "nah I'm not gonna give you that satisfaction", and say it's the same thing or that Shinon's worse. Shinon talked big and never actually pulled a weapon out. He was just having a mutual petty bitchfest with Janaff, and that was the worst it ever got.

"But he says a racist slur!" Have you looked at Soren? I love Soren and will defend Soren as a character, but he sure has said some shit. Before Ike understood "sub human" was bad, Soren got away with using it. Because Shinon initiated the conversation, Soren rode his coattails and didn't properly educate Ike on the term. He only stopped because, again, Ike didn't like it. Whenever Soren has a switch up, it's because of Ike, and not because of something that changed his mind.

Also, Reyson? He was ready to wipe out an entire group of beorc. No idea who they were, if they were innocent, what have you. Didn't care. Was ready to just kill all of them. He would have if Tibarn didn't convince him not to turn into that. Reyson does become the happy, sweet, soft person in the end, but there was a time he hated beorc probably more than anyone.

Yet it's always Shinon that gets called racist and typically only him, besides a few hardcore Soren haters out there. Other than them though, forget it. Nobody mentions how Jill and Tibarn, among others, were horrible about it too. They all get better.

Shinon's version of "better" isn't to be happy and have fun with them, and for some reason people seem to think that's the only way to get better. His way of better is to slowly improve himself. He's not a teenager who can just grow into that change. He has to put in more effort to reduce his old habits and get rid of them.

For starters, you have both the starting point where he realized he was mistaken in what he thought laguz were - his A support with Janaff, where he's about to say "sub human" and pauses and backtracks and changes his phrasing. If you carry their support into RD, they have a pre-existing bond. If he was still truly as racist as all that, the coders could've easily went "nah you know what, that's not truly a bond, we shouldn't give them a bonus together".

In RD, Ike tells Ranulf flat out that he gave his group the option not to go with him to join the Laguz Alliance. He states everyone preferred staying. We also see Shinon fumble in keeping up his image of trying to use racist terms for people he doesn't like (i.e. selective use of the term. He stopped using it for Janaff, but he used it in the base conversation because he didn't like the people he was talking to. That alone is still an improvement - it just needs work). He uses sub-human in front of Lyre and Kyza, but as soon as they leave, he switches to laguz. He goes back and forth in this case, which is more than he would've done before. The word "laguz" wouldn't have been an option in his mind to just say if this were past Shinon.

If you happen to support Shinon with Tibarn in RD, in their C support, he similarly is about to use "sub-human" but backtracks. No, he's not perfect at it, but Shinon is extremely confident and uses the one weapon type Tibarn is weak to - and he can also use crossbows, which Tibarn is extremely weak to. He's not backtracking out of fear. If he was, he'd have had no reason to do the exact same thing with Janaff. Also, their C support is Shinon's only case of almost using "sub human" at all in any of his RD support dialogue.

That said, Shinon got multiple personalized support dialogues in RD, which is plagued with impersonal support dialogue. They could have made it so his dialogues with laguz, specifically, were less pleasant. The supports with "You better stay by me" could've been changed for the laguz if the writers really felt like he shouldn't have improved that much. His lines of dialogue where he's mentioning his support partner messing up are more surprise and concern than aggravation (if he was aggravated, you'd know. He doesn't hide his complaints), and end with him lightly pushing to protect whoever it is - including laguz, and royalty laguz.

By his A support, he's using laguz and laguz alone for Caineghis and Tibarn. He's also given pleasant, wishful dialogue with all his other possible laguz partners. He hopes they'll live. By his A support, you could possibly even argue he has no doubts anymore. That could very well be his point of deciding to kill those old habits for good.

-

Shinon doesn't get oodles of backstory, but a lot of implications are littered throughout his dialogue in both games. For instance, we can infer he grew up extremely poor and that he was not given love by his parents ("You know, I’m not very sentimental. My mother never hugged me.") - ultimately ending up bitter, self sufficient, self reliant, distant, unable to properly express emotion or be gentle about it, and even not wanting Rolf to end up like him and looking out for him so Rolf can always come to him for support - something Shinon never had at his age. He's also implied to be a heavy drinker, given how drunk he was talking to Ike in a base conversation. Something tells me he's not a lightweight, so... he probably drank a lot.

I'm adding that stuff because I think it's relevant to how people perceive him. Soren and Jill, for instance, have their backstories brought up openly. It's fed to the player if you get the correct conversations. Shinon's backstory is all implied and never directly stated, which fits in with his character, because he wouldn't just spill his life story to someone without an extremely solid reason. But also, apparently, reading comprehension is too rare for people to read between the lines. 😬

--

Tl;dr, Shinon haters are such fucking goobers that I block them on sight, because it's never about his actual character. It's "because he's racist". Like half the main/major cast is at some point or another. But he's the only one people never give a pass to, despite that they pull the "but xyz got better!" argument. Shinon gets better - a LOT better from where he started in PoR to the end of RD - and they ignore that, because it doesn't fit their desired narrative. Then they try to find excuses to love Soren, Jill, Reyson, or whoever, and still hate Shinon. I've also never seen someone hate Pelleas on the basis of "he's racist", even though he is at one point.

Tl;dr tl;dr I'm tired of people just saying "he's racist" and making that his entire character and ignoring his growth. Their argument falls apart the instant they start it, but people still confidently use that argument.

--

If you were once someone who didn't understand Shinon but were open-minded enough to change your mind because you realized his dialogue is, like everyone else's, expressive of growth and change, cool! You're cool! This is about my frustrations with close-minded people who will tell you Shinon's racist and that's why they hate him, while telling you they love another former racist character who got better, while conveniently leaving out Shinon's growth. I've also seen people say they were told Shinon was a racist so they don't like him by default, which is literally just a convenient, "I'm not gonna tell them the full story though" from whoever told them.

"I don't like him because he's racist" = automatic invalid argument. You'd better be ready to tell me you also hate Soren, Jill, Reyson, Tibarn, Janaff, Ulki, Naesala, Lethe, Pelleas, Ashnard and Petrine, no exceptions. Honorable mentions to Sothe (Micaiah mentions he used to hate laguz and called them sub-humans), Zelgius (changing your armor doesn't change the shit you've said or your usage of "sub-human" when the word could've simply been left out of any given sentence) and I'm pretty sure Levail has said "sub-human" in there somewhere.

I love a fair chunk of those characters, by the way. But y'all ain't pulling the "he's racist" card on Shinon without it applying to all of the above. "But they got better!". Okay, Karen. 💅 Shinon will be here getting better without you.

You can't really play a Tellius game and enjoy its characters if you can't handle realistically intricate characters that are more than the same trait and conversation repeated in every support chain like Fates.

Also, like, you can hate Shinon. Just like... don't play the overused "racism" card and pretend it doesn't literally apply to a least one of your favorites at some point and literally be a hypocrite. It is annoying. And believe me, Soren haters are ridiculous about him too for the same reason. Another case of surface level hate, because people can't understand a character more complex than a Fates character.

I realize I complain about this a lot and I'm getting more aggressive about it as time goes on LOL, but it's just astounding HOW FUCKING OFTEN I see this same old argument about Shinon and nooooothing else. Compound that with more modern day Soren hate being over the same exact shit and I'm just not dealing with the hateful side of modern day FE fandom, I guess. Something in my brain just told me I would howling about this today (I didn't come across it today, thank the yeehaws, but my brain was just like "yeah. Today").