I was so surprised to find out he was the bad guy
November 30, 2013
2:58 pm
In case you aren’t familiar with Pokemon x/y, most of the dialogue in this comic is taken from actual in-game dialogue and Prof Sycamore’s reaction is how he actually responded to Lysandre’s weird Serial killer rant. Like, he invites you to a cafe to meet his good pal Lysandre, Lysandre goes on this weird CLEANSE THE FILTH monologue and walks off, and Sycamore is just like “what a passionate person! So proud and noble!”
Lysandre is literally anime John Galt.
As far as I’m aware John Galt just wanted to leave society to kill itself… he didn’t drag out the huge doomsday weapon and promise to kill everyone…
Just sayin.
Well, John Galt and his friends do basically deliberately MIS-build society before they leave it. As in, one of them built entire apartment complexes so badly that they’d collapse within a year, and found that funny.
John Gault and the other “Atlases” didn’t want to exterminate anyone, they just wanted to demonstrate that their skills were needed. In fact, violently attacking anyone would be contrary to Rand’s “Objectivist” moral code.
Rand’s central thesis is that business people are creatives just like artist and intellectuals and just like artist and intellectuals, they require freedom to do their work. Moreover, she argued that just as there are extraordinary artist and intellectuals throughout history, “Atlases” there are extraordinary economic creatives as well e.g. Edison, Ford, Jobs etc. Rand argued that in the end, suppression of economic creativity was just as dangerous as censorship of artistic and intellectual creativity. Telling economic creatives how to create is every bit as dangerous as telling artist what to create or intellectuals what to think.
Atlas shrugged is a literary thought experiment about what would happen if the economic creatives just went on strike rather than tolerating incremental enslavement. It is intended as a counterargument to the Marxist idea that material wealth “just happens” as a result of natural evolutionary forces and that inventors, engineers, architects, managers who organize production and capitalist who allocated surplus resources, simply don’t contribute anything to society and keep simply tossed aside.
The Communist actually tried to put this idea into practice and their economies instantly collapsed and they were forced to quietly bring back all the people who had run all the economic production prior to the Communist takeover.
Rand had a front row seat for that disaster because she grew up the daughter of a Jewish shopkeeper under Lenin and Stalin. Lenin kicked her family out into the street and turned their little drugstore over to a committee of individuals versed in nothing but revolutionary rhetoric. To the surprise of no one but Marxist, they couldn’t even manage a small shop and the effect of the same policies on major systems like electricity and banking were devastating.( Probably everyone would have starved if Herbert Hoover, then US Secretary of State, hadn’t organized a massive relief effort.) In the end, the Rand family were brought back to run their shop, and the same pattern was repeated everywhere else in the Soviet Union in enterprise great and small.
All the while, the Communist where vilifying any economic creatives from the lowest shop keep to the richest capitalist even while they desperately needed those individual’s skills to survive. (That pattern continued for decades. Staling gave speeches denouncing Henry Ford in the late 1930s at the very time Ford engineers where building the plants that would produce the T-34 tank.)
Rand grew up watching Communist spouting the noblest and most humane ideals, while being in reality hypocritical and murderous. Rand began to see all class warfare and redistribution ideals, even in democracies, as being of the same hypocritical and violent moral cast. Rand decided that only a morality based on voluntary, non-violent, self-interested trading was sustainable. All claims of using violence, especially under the guise of state law, were really just murderous selfish desires to exploit other people.
That is the reason why Rand is so hated by so many different ideologies, she undermined the idea the leaders of this or that ideology were some rare and noble creatures who could be trusted to use violence and coercion against economic creatives to create a more “just” society.
The deaths depicted in Atlas Shrugged simply mirror the unintentional deaths by material depredation that actually occurred in various Communist regimes when they tried to toss their “Atlases” aside. The fact that the characters choose to risk loss of life by downgrading their skills is just a literary contrivance, not a moral example.
Lysandre is not a Gault-ian character. An “atlas” can only function in the context of a greater society, somebody needs to buy the architect’s buildings and buy tickets for the railway tycoon’s trains. It would never occur to them to murder their customers.
It’s very revealing that largely leftist artist, intellectuals, academics and politicos view John Gault as a evil character when all he really ask is to have the same freedoms to work and create that leftist artist, intellectuals, academics and politicos demand for themselves.
The big problem is, her proposed way of giving freedoms to work basically amounted to ‘I’m going to go so far away from communist restrictions that it would in a practical sense cause many of the same problems’.
No philosophy can stand up to the rigors of reality. Atlases are very necessary and must not be restricted overly much, but, at the same time, until we hit a post-scarcity level of technology, the atlases stand upon a foundation of other people and the world around them, not soil, and steps must also be taken to ensure that those other people do not get crushed (in the Atlas’ self-interest as they would then fall over for lack of foundation). Balance is needed between ‘help myself enough that I can achieve greatness’ and ‘help others so that society can continue to function and we don’t get crushed by externalities’.
>Edison
Stopped reading right there.
Say what you will about Edison, but the man was a genius when it came to marketing. Yeah, he stole a bunch of other peoples’ inventions and was a terrible employer, but he lived in the 1800s before workers’ rights existed; working conditions were shit everywhere.
No, Rand is hated by so many different ideologies because she was a chain-smoking hypocrite who created a pseudo-philosophy practied primarily by college freshmen looking for justification to act like dicks to everyone.
Hell, it’s not even really hated – most philosophers don’t actually take it seriously, and for good reason.
After reading Shannon’s post it kind of becomes a moot point to me what sort of person Rand was or what she intended through her writing. I don’t like much of what the bible says either and a lot of people believe the world would be better without it (this is not an invitation to contest, just a statement of what some people, not myself believe). But if writing like Rand’s and the Bible can spark interesting thoughts like the things Shannon Love typed, then they are valuable. You don’t have to take a source seriously to develop serious theories from it and discuss those non-serious sources in hypothetically serious contexts.
JohN Galt and his ilk are considered to be evil because their economic creativity naturally involves hoarding as much wealth as possible for themselves, while letting the people who make their visions possible live on the scraps from their table. What Objectivism never bothers to take into account is that unrestricted and unregulated free market is an absolute disaster for the poor, who are the ones who have to bear the burden of shitty wages, poor safety standards in production facilities and pollution. But Objectivist never cares about that because they always envision themselves as captains of industry and cant even concieve that they dont have the skills needed to be on top either.
i’ve never found “shitty wages and unsafe facilities” to be that compelling of an arguement for regulation, myself. if people would rather live under those conditions than their previous ones (say, subsistence farming) then i say let them! on average, living conditions have improved and prices have gone down in unregulated markets, because if the people on top don’t make working for them more desirable than the alternative (and there’s always been alternatives), they quickly find themselves on top of a one-rung ladder.
Anyone who thinks subsistence farming is actually a viable way to “stick it to the man” and cajole businesses into caring about their employees probably has very little experience with trying to grow their own food. Or at least trying to start a farm from nothing.
Wow I can barely feed my family with the $7.25 per hour WalMart is giving me because it’s the least they’re legally allowed to I guess I’ll just use my next paycheque to move my family to an area with fertile, available land, buy that land as well as farming equipment and the required supplies, and possibly a goat and some chickens. With any luck we’ll be eating by next harvest season.
Even just backyard hydroponics can have a startup cost of hundreds to thousands of dollars, and that’s assuming you can afford a home with an outdoor area big enough to set up your hydroponics, and that’s not going to produce enough food for you to live off of. I tried to grow a single tomato plant as a hobby for the summer and $60+ and four months later I had a six foot tomato plant that never produced anything edible.
I have no idea how you spent $60 on a tomato plant…Everything else is spot on. Farming in the modern age is expensive, at least in an industrial/post industrial country. Land is too expensive, materials are too expensive…Hydroponics would be the path to the future, but until they see a wide adoption, they are going to be prohibitively costly to make and use. And trying to use farming to make a living is probably a big mistake anyway. I live in a rural community, and I don’t know anyone who hasn’t lost money at least two of the last three years. If not for subsidies, most of the farms around here would be money sucking black holes.
I had to buy a pot, I had to buy soil, I had to buy fertilizer, I had to buy a huge scaffold thing to tie it off to because it got so tall, I had to buy a UV lamp because my apartment doesn’t get enough sunlight to sustain plant life, then I had to buy a second because it got too big for the lamp on the leaves at the top to do any good for the leaves at the middle and bottom and it was starting to die, and I had to buy replacement bulbs when the UV lamps burnt out. Honestly, Two UV lamps and replacement bulbs alone probably could have run me more than $60.
You buy your replacement at the wrong place. A cheap sunlamp produce the uv your plant needs for a fraction of the price you see in the specialized shop. For the pot, a clean plastic trash can would give you a cheap alternative(take the big ones and cut a part of the top). You need fertilizer, make compost out of your vegetable trash and add eggshell in it. It’s all about getting alternative that will give you what you need at a better price without cutting on the quality.
Telling people to compost is assuming they have the space necessary to compost, which many don’t unless they want stinky decomposing food in their living rooms (we used to have a compost indoors when I was in the North! We stopped because it was terrible and smelly and dripped worm juice in the kitchen!). My lamps came from the hardware store, which is the only place to buy that sort of thing within reasonable driving distance from my home, the cheapest model they carried, and since the plant was growing in my living room I wanted a reasonably nice pot for it. I have disposable income, I don’t mind spending the money on a loser plant that didn’t grow vegetables for me because it was fun, but the point is very few people living in urban environments on minimum wage and barely making ends meet are going to have the space and capital necessary to grow enough of their own food to actually impact their grocery bills, no matter how willing they are to compost in their bedroom.
That’s actually my point: people are demonizing a system that provides them with significantly more opportunities than they’d have otherwise. I wasn’t meaning that people should quit their jobs and live off of the land, I meant that they should be grateful that they don’t have to.
Yeah, why should people complain Thales can’t afford to buy real food? At least they don’t have to farm!
Tomato plants need a lot of sun before they produce fruit. If you were growing one indoors that was that tall, it probably didn’t get enough light even with the hella expensive UV lamps.
Sometimes they’ll get tall and spindly just because they are looking for more light (to add insult to injury). If you want to try again next year (and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but if you have leftover soil/fertilizer/equipment, you might), try a dwarf plant (avoid the ones that say they are made for container gardens and the cherry tomato plants, because they’ll still grow tall. These are specifically labeled as dwarf tomato plamts, or hanging basket tomato plants, meaning that the plant stays small, not the fruit.).
The more you know.
People in many areas of the world still do live by subsistence farming & manual labor, so it’s not impossible, just such a step down in terms of comfort and such a step up in effort that nobody does it. Think about the industrial revolution: people moved from their farming communities to cities to get jobs in factories because the pay increase was worth more to them than their old working conditions were. What I’m getting at is that nobody is shackled to a job, self employment is always possible, even without an expensive education or investors.
Yeah, it’s just impossible if you don’t have money to buy land or move to where they give it away, or to keep eating while you wait for stuff to grow, you know, all that stuff people were posting about a couple of days ago.
Self-employment requires start-up capital though. If it fails, you’ve lost a lot of money and time. Also helps if you have either a skill-set, a willingness to do somewhat crappy jobs (self-employed without college or investors means lawn-work, laying down carpeting, and running a home day-care, for instance), and the ability to market yourself and make lots of useful connections.
Its’s not as easy as it sounds. Everything takes effort.
Okay, first of all, that things have gotten better, which is of course a good thing, is not a catch all excuse that big business should be allowed to treat its workers like disposable commodities. Second, as the cost of living increases in first world nations, being forced to subsist on minimum wage and no benefits basically turns the working class into the kind of indendtured servants you would see during the Industrial Revolution, which had such wonderful concepts as Company Towns or company credit in lieu of cash salaries. If regulating the economy is the only way to be treated like a human being I’m all for it.
Again, in the industrial revolution many people who previously lived in farming communities moved to factories for the higher pay and economic stability. They figured that indentured servitude was still a better idea than living on a farm and dying when their crops did.
And they weren’t entirely correct, seeing as they were treated terribly, often suffering maiming or death under unsafe work conditions, and they were often denied pay for such infractions as “not working hard enough” or “costing the company money” by getting injured on the job. And that was just the child laborers.
No industrial corporations treated their employees better until the government intervened, no matter what Randian armchair-economists like to think.
Minimum wage laws, banning child labour, safe working conditions, and on-the-job training all came about due to federal regulation. Under the anarchic-enterprise system, things were actually worse for workers than when they lived on farms.
Of course, anyone who constantly talks big about dropping all social welfare while collecting Social Security has suspect credentials, anyway…
Yes, because trying to survive on minimum wage and having shitty working conditions is a personal lifestyle choice that people don’t have to accept if they don’t want to.
Look, I’m sure your only experience with minimum wage, if any, was getting a summer job to supplement your allowance in high school, but maybe you should at try and give the appearance of knowing what the hell you’re talking about.
Obviously those who don’t have that choice are uncreative taker untermenschen who should just take it and let the superior people walk all over them as is their nature right as superior people, and the fact that these untermenchen are disproportionately overwhelmingly of a poorer background means nothing and raising that fact makes you a marxist commie nazi.
Pardon me, I probably shouldn’t have said this, as it is inflamatory and somewhat hypocritical. Damn this lack of an edit button.
I’ve been paying my way through college by washing windows (startup cost of $20 for the squeege & bucket, and I make between $10-$20/hr.). It isn’t hard to beat minimum wage by self employment.
Not always possible, Swagner.
There’s no market for window-washers in my city, unless you own power-washers & a motorized trellis & the whole kit.
Trying to be self-employed (without getting a loan to open a storefront) in any major metropolitan area in the US is not going to end well for most people. And even for the few that do manage to make it work, it often doesn’t pan out well enough for them to subsist solely on that job. Real-life example: I own a small coffeeshop that shares a building with another business. My shop doesn’t make enough profit to stay afloat *and* pay my rent, so I had to pick up a second job just to get by. That’s common for a lot of small business owners right now.
Also, assuming things about a person to dismiss their points is not merely argument ad hominem, but ad hominem via false attribution.
Most of the most wealth-equal societies on the planet have well-regulated economies. Scandinavian countries and such.
The US’s inequality has risen steadily since the regulation busting of the 80s, as well.
Sans regulation, there’s definitely nothing preventing hording and using wealth to build upon wealth while those without wealth to begin with are left behind.
Why is wealth equality the goal? The quality of life (economically), even for the lowest classes in America have been on the rise (and impressively so (see also: cell phones everywhere)), is quality of life a relative value? It’s hard to call anyone in America “left behind” compared to at the beginning of the 80’s.
Well, except the people strugging to put food in their mouths on a regular basis, living paycheck to paycheck at best, and whose plan for becoming too old to work is ‘die before then’, who exist in quite large numbers.
The goal isn’t everyone to be exactly the same, it’s to put a floor in there to keep everybody above water.
The problem with a floor is that instead of moving everybody above water, you move some above water and the rest lose their jobs. Besides that, giving people more currency is only a short term solution: a dollar is only worth what it can buy, and if more dollars are being given for the same work, in the end the currency will become inflated and the status quo will return to normal.
I’m just looking at the history of it: passing money around without producing wealth is at best a temporary solution to a long term problem. Social Security, for example: in spite of truly astronomical costs and a noble goal (old people shouldn’t starve), as you said, there are too many elderly people whose social security checks aren’t enough.
I don’t think the problem is that jobs don’t pay enough, I think the problem is that jobs aren’t worth enough. Increasing the pay of jobs that don’t benefit society enough to warrant that pay fixes nothing, and the same goes for creating new jobs that nobody wants done.
And how do you propose changing that? The only way to force creation of jobs that ARE worth enough is to force control of the means of production to more long-term productive goals, since externalities (namely, benefit to society as a whole isn’t an incentive for the people picking jobs OR the people creating jobs, only benefit to the corporation in particular).
Which has worked SO WELL when it was tried before. Better a mediocre option that works okay than an ideal option that causes dictatorship and widespread failure.
And don’t say deregulation, because that got us the Great Depression before regulation and the savings and loan crash when we started to deregulate – regulation is necessary so long as externalities that the market can’t handle exist, and believe me, there are a LOT of externalities for which technology does not exist to privatize affordably, or for which privatization would cause massive, massive justice issues.
You’re right. Shitty living conditions and nigh-enslavement of the underpriviliged is just swell.
Look how it turned out for France back in the 18th century. Oh, wait a minute, their ‘lower classes’ got together and took off the heads of the rich. Hm.
Ok, how about Germany in the 19th century? Oh, wait, no. The poor and the desperate gave rise to an insane megalomaniac by promising them a better life and delivering it through ruthless conquest.
Uh, Tunisia and Egypt in the 20th century? No, wait, the dictatorships and regimes there got ransacked over high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms and poor living conditions.
North Korea? Sure, let’s go with North Korea. Their freakshow military dictatorship might be causing mass malnourishment, disease and starvation while wasting tens of millions on a bunch of despots, but China’s supporting it so strongly with food and free cash that it hasn’t imploded in on itself yet.
That’s an interesting thought, comparing business to a creative endeavor. The differences I guess are that an artist requires only a canvas whereas a businessman requires a society where people are trying to live together, and the artist only wants to make a pretty thing for people to enjoy while the businessman wants to recreate the world in a way where it makes him money. I can see how Objectivism absolutely doesn’t work, if that’s what it takes to make it work.
Shanon love explains it well.
She didn’t specifically address that one particular example which I think bears addressing. He did not “intentionally misbuilding housing”.
What he actually did was buy all the components for the housing community from communist party approved manufacturers (the only ones whom he was legally allowed to buy) and proclaimed that it will fall apart in 6 months because he knows all of them are frauds who spout rhetoric while providing shoddy products. Furthermore, that the vast wealth he brought went right into the pocket of corrupt legislators who were the true owners of those fraudulent companies.
What he DID destroy on purpose was his own company, he had them mine incorrectly in such a way that the mines would have to be condemned, he did that explicitly because he found out all the robber baron communist masterminds have put all their ill gotten gains into his company thinking it a safe bet for the wealth they looted from the people. Furthermore they then went and used unfair laws to destroy competition and give it a taxpayer funded windfall vastly increasing their wealth. So he destroyed the stock value to cause them significant financial losses.
. . . um, robber barons are the opposite of communists, aren’t they?
In practice, it seems like the main differences are cosmetic, and how one got the job.
John Galt wouldn’t want to give anything, not even in vague justification for mass murder sort of way. According to objectivisim to give without receiving something in return is just as evil as receiving something for nothing.
Of course, ‘long term planning’, ‘you owe me one’, and ‘making sure they’ll be willing to do the same for you in the future’ basically refute that, but it makes sense if you don’t think about it.
Woah woah woah, you mean Atlas Shrugged was originally intended to make sense? Are you sure??
Less John Galt and more Dagny Taggart. She thinks stealing is wrong and DOES. IT. ALL. THE. TIME.
Apologies if I’m doubleposting. The web is being weird.
Who is Atlas… er… um… John Galt?
A guy who talks. A lot. And exists in a world that I am fairly certain is the mirror universe version of Captain Planet.
That’s quite possibly the best description of Atlas Shrugged’s world I’ve ever heard.
Oh. Oh my God. Yes. Yes. You summed it up so elegantly I want to weep. :)
I couldn’t have said it any better than Zap “Action” Rowsdower.
That being said, Lysandre is mostly unrelated to John Galt or Atlas Shrugged. While the quotes here seem to show otherwise, his motivations in-game are more opposed to “excessive consumption” rather than “persecution of captains of industry”.
The inspiration for Lyansdre’s philosophy was actually Thomas Malthus, who was the first to suggest and develop the consequences of overpopulation. The idea of accelerating population growth leading inevitably to famine is still called a “Malthusian catastrophe”.
Throw in some “beautiful people”/”master race” connotations, add a hefty dose of ginger, and voila you have a very camp villain.
The problem is of course that while discussing the issues of overpopulation which is a very real danger, almost everyone who thinks they have a solution for it thinks only their chosen group should be allowed to inhabit the planet, because everyone else is undeserving low class swine. Maybe this ties into some basic human tribalism or whatever, I dont know. It also frustrates me that people often have no tolerance at all for the poor and desperate, especially immigrants, like them trying to build something resembling a tolerable life is an offense, because the group that was there first wants all the privilege for themselves.
Well there is an olde classic solution to the problem: Space colonization~! Its only over population if your low on space so go to spaaaaaaaaaaaace~!
Its an often used solution to the issue in sci-fi (second only to an apocalyptic setting where the population was severely reduced somehow)
Sci-fi writers can take it to weird extremes though, such as one author who had each of the planets settled by entire continents that apparently transplanted to these planets, including the countries that had no possible way of attaining space travel or even having a motivation for leaving the planet earth XD
One exception that ended badly, was obviously the indigenous tribes of the Americas. Most tribes were actually quite happy to see new people and learn new ways and share the abundance of nature. Then the settlers started to figure they had more right to the lands and began kicking the tribes further and further off their homes into less and less hospitable environments through deception and good old fashion slaughter.
Oh~ There was also the example of the aborigines of Austrailia who were treated as a lesser people by the colonists in much the same way, with the colonists deciding for the Aborigines that said natives were really nomads and didn’t need any of that land they settled on. They were treated like slaves and even in the 1900’s many scientists were convinced that they were merely a human looking type of ape that made good slave labor and could monkey humans pretty well.
Similar events occurred in Africa with european settlers to name an example.
Not John Galt. Thomas Malthus.
Google “Malthusian catastrophe”.
Pokemon Shrugged
Pokemon shrugged. :lol: Pikacthulu’s brother shrugged.
How is he an anime so-and-so if he’s a video game character…
The two are not mutually exclusive.
A lot of games use anime-style design, and some are even based on anime (and vice versa).
Try reading it again, but think about the takers as the CEO’s who are unproductive but who skim off the profits from their employees labours.
It still completely works – Atlas Shrugged is just the Communist Manifesto as told by a raging idiot with a rape fetish.
Yeah… but… Who is John Galt?
Guys! Guys! Calm down! Give a few days to prep my perfect team, point me towards them, and watch me take care of the problem in one battle.
Worked with Team Rocket.
The easiest way to tell if someone is a bad guy is look at their character design. Lysandre is the flashiest guy in the game and therefore the main villain. I guess that didn’t apply in Gen I & II but otherwise yeah.
No, no, no. That is too much stretching ^^;; I know an anime (a shonen-ai / yaoi anime), the title is “Yami no Matsuei” (Descendant of Darkness). The protagonist wears black outfit (justified. He’s a handsome grim reaper). & the antagonist wears white suit.
This is the case of “Dark is not Evil” & “Light is not good”.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarkIsNotEvil
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LightIsNotGood
Also a case of “Black is good luck” in Japan. They where white to funerals, not black.
Which is kinda interesting because black is a mourning outfit too. So yeah, the deceased wears white, but all the guests who visits wears black, correct?
Gen 1 and 2 didn’t really have a big bad. Giovanni and Team Rocket were sort of medium bads, they needed to eb stopped but weren’t really the major plot point.
Ayn Rand in a nutshell.
I know it’s pretty much standard practise to pair every vaguely male-shaped video game character with all the other male-shaped characters and/or objects, but I really could not get over the feeling that Sycamore and Lysandre had a pretty serious Thing going on there. Or at the very least that Sycamore is a little too into that guy? He’s got a massive poké-boner for ole killy-mc-holocaust is what I’m saying and it’s kind of painfully obvious.
So glad I’m not the only one who thought this. And I should mention that I’m a straight dude who has never “shipped” any characters at all in my life. It’s not my thing. But even I thought, “Man, Professor Floppy Hair has a total crush on Captain Redbeard over here.”
He did not seem suspicious at all to me the first time I saw him.
Yeah, Jared’s reacting how I did… “Soooo you’re just okay with the mentally-unstable Dexter-serial-killer talk thing then?”
Pretty much, yeah, I reacted the same way too. Mostly.
And only Jared listened beyond the second panel…
Like most people the probably just nodded and pressed b in their minds over and over
Oh, that’s a relief. He’s just a serial killer? I got more of a genocidal dictator ambition vibe.
Or at least the sort of vibe you’d get from a revolutionary who wants a bloody revolution.
I’ll admit, he was doing alright until he got to the sixth panel, in my honest opinion. Until that point, he could’ve been just as easily talking about the 1% as anyone else.
Yeah, I, uh… I would probably vote for that guy.
Definitely had that “Ooh, one too far” feeling in p6, though.
Well, you can’t have a bloody revolution without cracking a few nuclear fuel rods over peoples’ heads (after you distract them with a bogus healthcare package)
Should have just went with the grand lottery with the prizes being all expense paid trips to Venus, where it is summer all year round.
Everyone is a winner here folks. Step right up, no pushing, room for everyone. Executive class you say? Why yes, we have exclusive express transport for executives. No need to travel with the riff raff.
[lets see who knows the short story this came from originally]
March Of the Morons
The sixth panel is what I hear (subconsiously fill in) when people talk like that, regardless of what group they’re talking about.
It does have more than a little of the “lets get rid of all the nasty Jews and gays and Romanis” about it.
Because definitely the way to show the villain as charismatic is just to make positive characters applaud their overtly evil worldview… [/sarcasm]
As I haven’t played Pokemon X/Y or seen many spoilers for the ending… What is exactly Lysandre’s and Team Plasma’s deal, specifically? They seem to talk a lot about beauty and Lysandre rants like a classic Nietzsche Wannabe, but how does that match up in the end?
(SPOILERS AHEAD) In Pokemon X, they want to gain eternal life for all the beautiful people and build a giant laser canon to kill everyone else.
Basically his plan is to kill everyone who isn’t in Team Flare and restarting to get rid of everything that isn’t beautiful with a giant laser beam.
Team Flare (Plasma was from gen 5) basically want to reduce the population of the world. The short of it is that Lysandre believes humans will eventually eat away at all of the resources on the planet, and the only way to prevent this is to wipe out most of humanity and start over with a small group of humans.
The talk of “beauty” has to do with the world’s natural beauty and how humans sort of eat away at it and destroy it. However, this sentiment is really only shown through Lysandre. The rest of Team Flare just seems themselves as being stylish, and that only stylish people get to live in the new world.
In the end it was just standard destroy the world except team flare stuff. Oh and they were going to kill all the pokemon, but more as a byproduct of their doomsday weapon than the purpose.
So, burn the village to save the village type deal?
Far more likely as speaking out against the 99%, in my opinion. Think about it; he’s (obviously) a member of the alleged “1%”, he planned to kill the vast majority of people, not a small group of wealthy folks (indeed, most of them would be spared by buying their way into team flare), but the majority of humanity, because of “those who [take] what is not theirs” (I see that as a metaphor for welfare recipients, etc.) who he sees as a significant portion of humanity.
Weird how the same speech can be interpreted so differently, huh? (Except for the “bloody revolution” part, that’s pretty constant.)
Basically, he was all noble at one point but began to realize that there was nothing he could do to actually help people long term, so he just up and decided to destroy most of the population so that the rest wouldn’t have to fight for resources.
By the time we meet him, he’s so blatantly, obviously evil that I was convinced they were going to do a switch around and make him just Pokemon league champion or something.
Lysandre initially just wanted to create a beautiful world; good intentions, but nobody was really helping him with it. As time went by he grew jaded, both at the “dregs of society” that made the world ugly (he considered Pokémon to be beautiful creatures, for example, and thus considered it ugly of humanity to use them for battle), and at the fact that a lot of people, even ones he considered beautiful, disagreed with his ideas of beauty and how the world should be changed. After repeated trying and failing to make the world a more beautiful place, he eventually grows frustrated enough that he decides the only possible solution is to kill everybody except those who agree with him (i.e. team Flare). This will kill of Pokémon as well as humanity, and Lysander is upset about this, but he deems it a necessary sacrifice and moves on with his attempted genocide anyways. Fortunately he is defeated by children.
Team Flare on the other hand are strikingly different than Lysandre, and in spite of what Lysandre himself thinks, most of them don’t seem to share his ideals. Most Team Flare members encountered in the game are working not for beauty, or any misguided attempt at a greater good, but for personal gain. They basically want stuff, and they want ALL of it, and they’re convinced that Lysandre’s plan of getting rid of everyone else will make that stuff more available to them. Many of them also have a habit of pointing out that they’re allowed to do what they want because they’re adults, all the while acting like spoiled children. They come across as teenagers/young 20-somethings who’ve been given way more power than they know how to handle, and ultimately Team Flare seems to be less like Lysandre’s team, and more like grunts of his unpleasant head scientist Xerosic.
Honestly, if Lysandre actually stepped back to listen to his own grunts once in a while rather than constantly trying to work on a global scale he’d likely see how despicable his own allies really are, would probably deem them ‘ugly’ in a heartbeat, considering his high standards, and might even realize that there are bigger tarnishers of his beautiful world than everyday Pokémon trainers.
His deal was that the world was so corrupt that he needed to reset it with a mass genocide and then re-build it with Team Plasma at the forefront.
And he was going to kill all the Pokemon, but it was on purpose, not a bi-product. He recognized them weapons waiting to be wielded against one another. Black and White was questioning the morality of capturing wild Pokemon and forcing them to fight or dress up in horrid outfits to perform.
What I love about X and Y is that it turns 180 and questions why humanity is letting such dangerous creatures to exist in the first place. People are NOT at the top of the food chain. Even the most common (Rattata) can clean chew off your leg with a hyper fang. Our tech isn’t even an advantage, because there are Pokes like Rotom or Porygon that would turn it against us.
Psst, wrong Team, Plasma is in Unova.
poke ball=tech.
Pokeball = They don’t actually have to do as they’re told and are capable of breaking out of their balls unless you break the ball that you capture them with.
For this to work, you would have to mass produce master balls (a priceless object) and then break each one per Pokemon.
I would give humans about a month of Pokemon decided to end them.
Considering that in the Pokemon world, God is actually a Pokemon, if humanity ever went anywhere near actally fullfilling any sort of extermination plans just to make sure they get the top of the food chain, we’d prbably get some Sodom and Gomorra disaster up ins. Like Redten said, Pokeballs only contain the Pokemon for convenience, they dont actually bend the creature to the trainers will, they just hang around out of friendship or loyalty. Within the context of the storyline and gameworld of course, not the gameplay. Basically, humanity sticks around because Pokemon, for whatever reason, are apparently intended to be their companions, wether its as workers, fighters of just friends.
You meant Team Flare, Team Plasma is in Unova.
Yeah, I got that already.
Thanks everyone for the explanations.
I think a big part of the problem is that Pokemon has always had very distinctly Japanese values behind it, as well as very distinctly awkward localization into English. So when you combine the two, you get stuff like this.
Yeah except that XY has been localized straight away so I don’t really feel that this reason works this time around. Lysandre here does want to get rid of the humans that are ruining (the beauty of) this planet. Noble goals but extremist views no matter what language of the game you play it in…
True, and while this one was pretty awkward, I thought they at least did a decent job with team plasma. The whole “disarm the populace under the guise of being animal rights activists” thing was sneaky indeed, and while not (directly) applicable IRL, it still made me think…
Team Plasma: Translated into American English easily due to being based on American values. In America.
Team America, hell yeah!
Yeah, Hell, Team America!
This one in particular also seems to be Japanese values pretending to be French values, then sort-of translated into English. It’s understandably a bit wonky in places.
Wait, was his “schtick” changed for the localization? What was it in the Japanese version then?
If you’re talking about Lysandre, he’s exactly the same in the Japanese games. An awkward translation would be if things were worded funny and the like, so I’m not sure what D. Walker means by awkward translation.
Wouldn’t surprise me if he went to the same school as Dr. Hel and Baron Ashler.
Hot diggity damn I love that last panel.
Like many things, his stance is good in theory, but bad in practice. Rather than destroy the takers, he should let them destroy themselves; if he leaves them alone and continues to be a giver, people will look to him as an example, and this will naturally vilify his opponents. Remember, social death is far more dangerous than physical death.
Funny how the only people who can say that are the living ones.
wasn’t that the opinion of half the pokemon movie villains?
Alsso.
Weren’t they all completely insane?
The sad thing is that this would be, dare I say, super effective in the pokemon-verse
How, exactly, is there such a thing as a ‘taker’ on a planet that has mastered matter-to-energy-and-back conversion, translation of reality into computer programs and back even for living things, and animals that can provide unlimited energy? Heck, the only reason they don’t have a thriving space colony program is nobody’s thought to use Blast Burn as a propellant or weather abilities as terraforming.
I’ve always assumed that they don’t have a space program because of hordes horrifyingly powerful space pokemon.
Don’t be messin’ with Deoxys yo.
“Taker” = “people who think they should have a share of the wealth they create.”
Ironically the only thing Rand produced was a cult of personality.
Who is John Galt!?
Because two wrongs make a right.
But three lefts do!
Clearly [/sarcasm]
So does three lefts.
Wanna know how long it took for me to spot him as the bad guy?
Twenty seconds of dialogue at the first time you meet him. As soon as I heard the ‘beauty’ schpeal, I just went “Oh, HE’S the Giovanni of this region.” Seriously, he’s going on about beauty and fashion, and Team Flare is all about fashion? In FRIKKEN FRANCE?! How obvious can you get?
No one ever said Professor Sycamore was that smart. He was pretty surprised that Pokemon liked being pet and fed too.
I’m pretty sure that Sycamore got his doctorate because they needed a Professor Boyfriend for a publicity campaign or something, because from what i’ve seen/heard he’s a serious ditz.
Its a World where EVERYTHING is about pokemon.
You can’t cross the street without running into a pokemon.
every last book in the libary is about Pokemon.
he CLAIMS to be a pokemon professor but is totally taken by suprise that they like to eat.
Why do I suddenly have to think of Fantastic from New Vegas?
I suspected he was the leader of Team Flare right after I encountered him post first Team Flare encounter. I knew for sure when he wanted to meet in the Team Flare cafe.
So yeah, he was kinda obvious. You’re right.
Although honestly, this does bring up a good point. Seriously. Lysandre tried to BLOW UP the WORLD and then at the end when you stop him and he was literally minutes away from performing at LEAST nationwide genocide one of your friends opens their fat trap and goes “Well I can relate to him, he just went about it the wrong way.” I hate to get all Godwin on people but that’s like saying you kind of relate with Hitler but he went about it the wrong way. And it’s not a false analogy! He was minutes away from using a doomsday device to kill us all, that’s worse than killing off a few groups of people.
He didn’t have a point, he was fucking insane and yet, yeah people seemed to be on his side to an extent when he was trying to kill them…. very actively…. and was THAT close to doing so!
I like to call that “Detective Conan Syndrome,” because that anime went to such extreme efforts to make every villain sympathetic that I couldn’t take it. When they tried it with the guy who committed suicide and framed a pop star he was in love with to make it look like she was responsible that I couldn’t take it anymore.
I think the point of relation was on wanting a beautiful world, not on wanting to kill everyone.
The Japanese are HUGE on aesthetics and beauty, so with that mindset the -desire- for a pure, beautiful world is relatable. The difference is how you get there (and, indeed, what exactly you consider to -be- pure and beautiful).
Also a big deal to the French. Because, you know. French.
It’s not worse to kill all people than it is to cleanse selected groups. At least killing everyone means you hate everyone equally. :-)
I like this guy.
The face on the 6th panel, priceless.
Wait, hang on, the Pokemon games have plot now? Well, time to go buy a gameboy…
And the transforming wine glass is my favorite character from this installment :D
More specifically, they have a plot. As in one, that gets reused in every generation. Small child gets gifted with pokemon. Catches more. Works towards catching all pokemon and beating all gym masters, attempts to be become pokemon league champion. Runs into “super-powerful” villains who want to steal every one else’s pokemon and/or destroy the world. Small child defeats these “super-powerful” villains one by one, stopping their evil scheme. Continues on quest to catch all pokemon and become league champion.
That’s it. That’s all the games.
Transforming… wine glass?
When I first heard him, I always just kinda assumed that Lysandre meant he would make life easier for people, so they wouldn’t have to be dregs…
This almost makes me want to play Pokemon again. Only ever played Red/Blue way back when. It would seem that things got heavy at a certain point.
If you are thinking about buying Pokemon for the storyline, I wouldn’t go with x/y. They kinda had something good going there, but they got it over with way too quickly. As far as storylines go, black/white was much more well-built.
Personally, I find it amusing how Lysandre was able to extort all that money from those who joined Team Flare, and rather than see that as a “pay or die” protection racket, they see it as “buying a new life for just 5,000,000 pokedollars”
More like pokeyen, really, given that the symbol has a horizontal line, not a vertical.
heres the ammount in US dollars $48840.048
Poke-cash isn’t Yen… or any cash on the market. Unless you’re actually using a conversion from a bottle of soda or fresh water or something?
I definitely agree that B/W 1 has the best Pokèmon plot, but I think X/Y wasn’t bad either.
The way I interpreted his speech here was more in a Pokèmon context. Talking about making sure there’s enough resources to survive by killing off those who didn’t contribute. My brain translated that as a survival-of-the-fittest kinda way & he only kept those w/ potential alive. To me that translated pretty directly to him wanting humans to essentially Mega-Evolve and kill off the humans who couldn’t. Also, note how most Team Flare members has Pokèmon who COULD mega (ex: Houndoom, Manectric, Banette, Gyrados, etc). It seemed to be their theme, at least to me.
Side note: I REALLY hope this is the start of a small, Jared-based arch XD
Meh, it’s not about the plot itself more than the construction of the plot. In black/white the gym leaders actually felt like they had some significance to society as a whole, and the plot develops a bit for every city you visit. It was the only generation in which the plot only ended after the E4, or received more emphasis than it. In the meanwhile, in x/y you stop team flare from doing a few unrelated stuff like, thrice, and then when things start to get serious, you figure out their goals and how they plan on achieving them and put a stop to their plans in about 20 minutes.
Also, Lysandre’s logic fails pretty hard when you consider that the only criteria for joining team flare is paying the entry fee and being willing to murder everyone so they can live. What kind of society was he trying to build with team flare, again?
And I’m personally hoping Jared gets a mega ring. More out of curiosity about how he would use it than anything, really.
Mega Mister Fish, obviously.
Very good point. I haven’t finished Y, but I’m kind of disappointed to heard that they went back to having the save-the-world plot end in the middle of the become-the-champion plot. That was always so annoying. It’s like, why am I still playing…? All the tension’s gone out of the game.
Does make me wonder what the League Champion is doing during all this. I do like how in BW, the Gym Leaders were kinda like regional sheriffs.
Daaamn, who kicked HIM out of art school?
Oh my god that is now my favorite fanon theory ever! XD
It makes so much sense now.
I call shenanigans in the punch. Blinded sub boss zombies to follow.
All I have to say about this storyline is that Jared better end up being able to Mega Evolve Mr. Fish Whenever he wants so he can call his father and shove it in his face that he can get rid of Mr. Fish’s 4X Weakness to Electric and make him stronger all around.Granted, the latter part is wishful thinking, however, I still say we get Jared with Mega Mr. Fish.
Ive found that nearly every person who consider themselves to be big contributors to society are in fact just as worthless as the people they look down on.
Well, a hobo might smell bad, but it takes the owners of a transnational corporation to actively take billions of dollars from the people of the world in tax refunds while providing workers with less than minimum wage in exchange for selling us luxuries we don’t need.
Don’t forget the part of brainwashing everybody so we’ll think we need said luxuries.
And the exploitation of limited natural resources and use of mercenary armies to subjugate people living on those resources. . .
There is so such thing as “natural” resources. All resources are artifical, the products of human activity and as such we can always make more or produce substitutes.
The concept of “natural resources” was created in late 1800s as a justification for colonialism and imperilism. “Gosh, we hate to invade but we just have to have those natural, irreplacable resources.” If people understood that resources could be created pretty much on demand, the political classes of the centralized militerized states of Europe would have had a lot less power.
Today, the myth of natural resources is used pretty much the same way except now its a pretext for the poltiical classes to have power by controlling rationing of a fixed and limited resources.
People have been predicting catastrophy from resource depletion for well over two hundred years now and they’ve always been wrong. Instead the available resources keep expanding and expanding. We’ve got more stuff to work with every passing day.
Oh, and corporations don’t use mercenary armies. Instead, the militaries of governments seize control of areas or exercise some form of imminate domain, so that the government can get the revenues from the corporation.
Not to mention that the greatest levels of environmental destruction, militarism and mass murder arises from political doctrines hostile to capitalism and corporations.
Uh…so you’re saying that we won’t ever have to run out of oil, coal, copper, gold and other resources?
Yes, these are natural resources, finite and unequally distributed throughout the earth.
The resources keep expanding because we find better ways of getting at them- drilling deeper, more efficiently extracting ore- but that does not mean the available resources will keep expanding.
Me, I was mostly wondering how exactly “environmental destruction” can happen when the environment is apparently indestructible and inexhaustible. All that carbon being pumped into the atmosphere by coal plant obviously can’t be ruining anything for anyone, since that doesn’t arise from anti-corporate sentiments.
Remember kids, don’t drink the Randian kool-aid, or you become like THIS person.
A complete and utter twat.
Yeah luxuries like computers, video, games, web comics…
Really wish I had your god like omniscience to so confidently determine exactly what material goods every other human being on the planet needs so that I could castigate economic creatives for selling what people choose to buy instead what I know infailably they actually need.
I mean, if I made such a moral pronouncement with my mere mortal knowledge of the needs of others, I would sound like a arrogant hypocritical jackass.
Brainwashing… I guess you are immune. Then again, you are a good like elite. But I guess you’re not really big on this whole democracy thing right? After all, if corporations can brainwash people to buy thing you know they don’t need, the political groups, who can not only advertise but actively bribe people with government money, must be able to do even more brianwashing. That would make all democracy a bit of farce, wouldn’t it?
To bad we can’t get all the perfect, ominicient, elite people like yourself to take over absolute power and tell all the rest of us inferior humans exactly what to do all the time. That’s been tried in the past and never worked but hey, maybe you’ll get it right this time.
Yeah, you know, as someone who makes a living on entertainment and advertising I am all for capitalism, it just needs to be better regulated so we don’t have people at the top of the ladder collecting money like a video game high score.
Amen, Coelasquid!
First of all, when did i say i was immune? If i were immune, i wouldn’t care. The problem is that i am not. And i take issue with sellers who exploit that.
If i want something, it should be because i want it by my own volition, not because someone is trying to make me want it just to earn more money.
The big problem is that corporations and capitalism waste the resources and energy. Like having to buy an IPod that is exactly the same as the previous one every year or shortening the lifespan of their products.
That is understandable as they would quickly go out of business if their stuff could last for years or decades. What doesn’t make sense is trying to lower the expenses by offering the workers the lowest wages possible.
The problem with that is that they are cutting off the very branch they are sitting on. If they continue to exploit the people not only will they cause a revolution (cause people will finally have enough of their bullshit) but also no one will be able to afford their stuff.
In order for an economy to prosper you need people with relatively high income, people can only spend money if they HAVE IT. If you try to suck all the money out of the market to enlarge your $enis then you’ll end up with a society that doesn’t have the money to buy your stuff.
Nonsense, that’s what loans and mortgages and credit cards are for and that’s never caused massive problems![/sarcasm]
Actually, it takes a poltical class that says “no, we really know what we’re doing with the economy this time so we’re going to raise taxes on that economic sector and lower taxes or subsidize that other one.”
Business people can’t exploit government if the government doesn’t try to direct business. Once you give politicians the power to favor one business over another, regardless of the rationale, it is inevitable that somebody will game the system.
So, since we can’t trust government, we should trust the people who haven’t raised our wages since the 1980s and the last time they were let free of government regulation gave us the events of 1929?
I really couldn’t agree more. That is espeically true of self-appointed moral scolds of all types, especially “intellectuals”, academics, and “activistist” who claim that they and they alone know what is just and unjust and how the rest of us should just kiss their feet, give them all the fruits of our labors and in general do everything they say always.
If anyone is asking for ALL the fruits of your labor, they’re probably not actually a liberal, they’re a supervillain disguised as one. The current highest income tax bracket is less than 40%, so nobody’s even asking for a MAJORITY of the fruits of your labor. All anybody asks is that you pay your share of the effort to compensate for economic externalities of the sort that we haven’t figured out how to manage privately yet (no private company will pave roads in rural Kansas for cheap, and try privatizing the atmosphere, or having a modern information economy on sweatshop salaries).
Also, NEVER do everything I say. Questioning, debate, and dealmaking is absolutely necessary. But it must be a debate; if you call me an elitist fool who understands nothing, and won’t bargain and try to meet halfway, it helps cause class conflict, not accomplishes anything. Hate liberals by all means. But negotiate for your way, make sure that we both get at least SOME of what we want, instead of wasting time and energy calling each other hypocritical nutjobs.
Says the person who has spent the entire comments section fanboying over Ayn Rand.
Yeah, Stranger. /that’s/ a convincing counterargument. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
The honorable villain in a common theme in Japanese literature.
In classic Shinto religion the Kami/gods do not reward based on an individual’s adherence to a set of moral rules but instead to the sincerity by which the individual pursues their goals. This was likely reinforced by the somewhat nihilistic aspects of Buddhism in which the desire for existence by individuals is the ultimate cause of suffering and not the moral choices of individuals. In classical Japanese morality, it is sincerity vs insincerity and not “good” vs “evil” that is the primary moral indicator.
From the Japanese perspective, Lysandre would be seen as admirable if he sincerely believed in the rightness of his course of action and if he earnestly followed it through to the end.
This cultural trait was a big part of the reason that the young radical idealistic officers were able to hijack the Imperial Japanese government in the early 1930s and send Japan down the path of suicidal war. So many people who opposed them nevertheless admired their sincerity and self-sacrifice that they found it difficult to muster the moral authority to suppress them. Tojo is a good example, though a brutal war leader, he was in his personal life without stain, such that even the war crimes investigators could find no evidence he used his enormous political power for personal gain.
The entire moral framework of Pokemon, is really just a reflection of this ethos of sincerity. Like the theme of the wandering journeyman warrior which it evolved from, the moral goal in Pokemon is not victory and glory but the spiritual perfection of devoting oneself with wholehearted sincerity to goal of becoming “the best.”
It is a powerful ethos, as evidenced by Japans meteoric rise from medieval civilization to industrial power in under a century, but, as evidenced by the political collapse that led to the Pacific war, an inherently dangerous one as well.
I used to flinch a bit every time my kids watched Pokemon because in the characters pronouncements of sincere utter determination, I heard the voices of the hopeless and abandoned men who fought to the death without moral restriction for every yard of the Pacific islands in WWII. They fought so sincerely and with such dedication that only the unconscious wounded were taken alive. The horror of those battles played a major role in Trueman’s decision to deploy the atomic bomb rather than go through with Downfall and fight those battles across the whole of Japan.
“Pikachu go!” always chilled me a little bit.
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.
Dear god…
No wonder Japan turned hyper-passive after the war…
Just a historical note that despite the literary trope of evil aristocrat or business genius wanting to exterminate the masses, that has actually never happened even once in history.
In fact, its just the opposite. The people who wipe out the little guys are always the demagogues who rise to power by claiming they will stick it to the rich and powerful. When they run out of looted wealth or just plain screw up because of mythical ideas (Lenin) the little guys start to get uppity and the savior of the masses starts gunning people down.
As near as I can tell, this literary trope comes from Frits Lang’s Metropolis in which the evil capitalist (Lang was a Marxist) conspire to drown all the workers once they’ve been replaced with robots. Like all Marxist, Lang had a static view of society of the economy and didn’t understand that under the creative drive of capitalism, society and jobs would constantly evolve.
I suspect the appeal of the trope has more to do with people wanting to vilify and dehumanize the wealthy so those doing the vilifying can slide into their place. .
Er, hate to break it to you, but this has ALWAYS happened. “Your troubles weren’t caused by me or the current society, they were caused by that group over there! Go persecute and massacre them!” is one of the oldest messages by political and economic elites ever. Scapegoating of the other is as old, if not older, than bread and circuses.
What would you call it when an aristocrat sets a homeless person on fire, thinking that they deserve it because they’re homeless, and that it will set an example so people will be less homeless? Cause I’m pretty sure that happened at least once.
As a Jewish person, f-k you.
Seriously.
I couldn’t help but think “Dr. Zaius!” when looking the fifth panel…
Given that Jared is drinking a can of soda there, I’m going to conclude that Lysandre Mc-Fluffy-Mane spiked the wine.
You mean that explains why nobody is commenting that he, Lysandre, has a face that in no way resembles a human’s? It isn’t the art style of the comic, that’s his look in general.
Jared being the voice of reason is just cause for mass panic.
This is the second time, too. It’s utterly terrifying to think that, in the world of Pokemon, he’s actually a massive genius.
Then again, the Commander himself pointed out that in this society they send kids at the age of 10 out into the wilderness, so the sense of the adults here IS heavily questionable.
In the Pokémon universe, a person is considered an adult either 1) upon age of consent (between 16 and 18, as typical) or 2) the day they abandon their home life and education in the pursuit of aggressive magical monsters. And they’re allowed to as young as 10. 10 year old children are legally allowed to take jobs, sign contracts, own property, get married. So it makes sense that they’re all Zubat-poop wacko nutso.
And in a terrifying revelation, that means that Jared is legally an adult. But then again, he’s 16 anyway, so…
He’s like 18 or 19. Old enough to vote and be a contributing member of society at least.
Was he always that age, or did I read too much into the flashback?
Ah, Generic Evil Cult Leader 101. You are one of the Chosen Special People, which is why you should make me Supreme Ruler of All, work for my glory, and help kill the nonbelievers (letting you take up a position second to me lording over the worthless peons).
Money really does make anything sound reasonable.
If there’s one thing I dislike about X and Y its how its villains weren’t subtle at all… Doesn’t help that the Team Flare Grunts clearly weren’t picked for their brains and literally help you more than they hinder you:p
Something tells me Sycamore has had a little to much wine… That or he’s perpetually drunk which would explain why he gives two different starter pokemon and a highly expensive stone that could unleash untold power to kids.
The staryotype is that the French are usually drunk due to depressing films that don’t have enough sex in them. And, I always thought of Prof. Sicamore as a spaniard who had a little too much of the wine to remember whatever horrible memory that took place in Spain.
I see what you did there… lol (At least, I hope I see what you did there, and that you didn’t just massively misspell “stereotype”)
I will be disappointed if this doesn’t end in a pokemon battle.
I am reminded of a fabulously-dressed, ginger, anime Ra’s al Ghul?
He should refer to the player as ‘detective’.
Huh. So Mitt Romney grew a giant beard and started studying Pokemon after he lost.
I had heard he kidnapped a fashion designer who could talk to animals.
What are you talking about?
Lysandre is clearly left wing. Maybe it wasn’t clear from this comic, but in the game, he constantly spouts off about the haves and the have nots, the belief that the world is overpopulated, how mankind does nothing but pollute the earth, and that everyone should have a fair share in everything.
This isn’t even a shot at the president, it’s just a statement of fact: if either candidate in that election had anything in common with Lysandre, it was Obama.
You know, I obviously skimmed through most of the plot relevant dialogue of Pokemon(as usual), except the most radical parts like whole “cleansing the filth” and the whole story about the Pokemon superweapon, so I didn’t catch on until now: Lysandre is the Andrew Ryan of the Pokemon World.
Pokemon Z will probably be in a submarine city where people went crazy after realizing the power of Mega Evolutions, probably.
Pokeshock. Could totally see that as a fanfic.
Poke-political debates aside, please tell me that Lysander is a candidate for “super villain” for the next story ark. It would be very amusing to see the commander’s reaction and you might be able to sneak a Gakt in with this one. After all, he is about the beautification of the world though violent means, though, rather than trying to force something onto a populous that may or may not benefit from the action, he just says “screw everything” and wants to destroy the world.
An ark with him involved would be so entertaining.
I’m not harping on your spelling (I know what you meant) and I agree with you fully, but now I can’t help but picture a giant boat filled with all the prettiest of super-villains, with the Commander and Canadian Guy sailing past on a rough, hand-hewn raft, both punching the air and shouting manly insults.
I’m sorry. My computer is being a derp and not letting post and my phone hates me.
However, that typo does make for a hilarious comic. Also, taking into consideration that Pokemon usually has some sort of cruise involved, it makes it all the better.
Am I the only one who notices that the kid-assistants with the red and blue scarves have been drinking wine.
I saw that, but i didn’t mind.
I haven’t played x/y and I don’t know Lysandre, but just by the facial expressions you’ve drawn on the man I would follow him barefoot into hell. XD
I was surprised at that too…..
But then by the end of the game…. after you defeat Team Flare…
Sycamore is all emo about Lysandre…
And I realized:
Buff guy.
Fashion conscious.
Overly stylized.
Lysandre is Japanese gay. (they think big and buff is the domain of flaming queens there… which makes the Team name probably an in-joke.)
And Sycamore’s reactions to Lysandre’s… crazy talk…
They were totes doing it.
i knew he was a villain before he even said a word
The moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he was the bad guy.
Fancy outfit? Check
Crazy hair? Check
Strong posture? Check
Crazy speech? Fuckin’ CHECK
So Jared is joining Team Flair? Cue Star Driver transformation scene!
It’s like a prettier version of Ayn Rand…
It’s interesting to think about WHY Sycamore was so blasé about Lysandre’s whole deal. I mean, it wasn’t really apparent that he had anything to DO with Team Flare besides his BFF Lysandre. He even sent his assistants after them (presumably, to keep an eye out?) but it occurs to me that he probably would have been killed off had Flare succeeded.
It leaves me to wonder about his character because wow the potential is amazing. It could be an amazing character study.
And, well, I’m kinda tired of reading about how he’s all looks no brains or that Lysandre and Sycamore were an item. I want other theories too you know.
My theory is that Sycamore is, indeed, a genius, at a level that we sort of missed out on.
When you talk to Sycamore later in the game, he basically says “Lysandre wants to destroy all the filth in the world, but what he thinks and what is are mutually exclusive.” In a nut shell, he says that Lysandre’s idea of beauty doesn’t match up with reality and as such won’t succeed in his plans.
All of this hinges on the assumption that he knew Lysandre would utterly fail. Sycamore did, however, have 2 guarantees that he’d have to tools to stop his friend in the event that Lysandre got anywhere with his plans – you and your neighbor. (Shauna, Trevor, and Tierno where too cuckoo-go-nuts to rely on to save the world.)
That, or Sycamore just thought “oh, look at that guy, thinks he can ‘cleanse the world’. Like that will ever happen.” Seriously, who knew (beside the evil organization studying it) that there was a horrible doomsday device powered by an ancient eldritch horror?
In the game, Sycamore acknowledges that he should’ve had a talk with Lysandre but it’s too late by then (he’s already defeated). So that shows Sycamore knew better but chose to overlook it. My theory is related to money. Lysandre created the holo-caster and shared the profits with pokemon research facilities.. Hmmmm…. research facilities like the one belonging to Professor Sycamore perhaps? Sycamore is flighty but not stupid. He knows better than to talk against the one who donates generously to his research projects. There is a reason why he’s rich enough to hand out 2 starter pokemon like it’s no big deal!
Man, that guy there… he’s got a real “Rarity Unicorn” thing going on. Not in a good way.
When did we go from a comic about silly things to message board full of political commentary?
This is the Internet, everything is political.
I just reached this point in the game, then I went to the cafe and he’s talking about preserving beauty forever, I picture him freezing people in carbonite and stashing them away. Run Jared, before it’s too late!
Yeah, except I figure he’d be more about the lucite, just to be trendy.
Ooooooooo, tres chic!
The Commander sculpt looks cool!!! :)
Poke-War in the machomovie-game-summa world.
My money is on mr. fish.
I originally read the first panel as “I believe that people can generally be divided into two food groups…” and didn’t think anything of it until the next panel. What is wrong with me.
SO TRUE.
it was mostly unexpected, but for anyone who watched death note, it was seen from a mile away
Am I the only one who’s giddy about Sina and Dexio being in this? :”3
xD Also loving how Sycamore’s look turned out in this style.
Until I read the panel under the comics, I honestly thought that this was either a political comic or a swipe at Ayn Rand. Given that my only real exposure to Pokemon was the cartoon that my then-roommate liked to watch, Lysandre is actually quite a bit darker than what I envisioned a Pokemon villain to be like.
So is Jared now the Pokemon Professor for the America Region or just the State he currently resides in? And in an related note, how can HE now be the voice of reason here?
Because Sycamore’s lackeys know NOT TO SPEAK.
I’m pretty sure Sycamore has some sort of brain damage or he just smiles and puts up with Lysandre’s theories because they are friends?
Sycamore is just weird.
I always found it ridiculous that Team Plasma’s ideaology, which was actually not sincere, but had lots of good points, was always blamed, critisized by like every NPC. But when a guy wants to commit, like, a genocide, it’s suddenly all about seeing the situation from different points of view and tolerance…
What?
Is it wrong that I agree with him?
What I loved about team Flare is that they were simple. I’ve never liked it when villains try to over complicate matters with menial b.s. when what they’re doing is clearly wrong (polish a turd, it’s still a turd). Lysandre was kinda like that, but Team Flare as an all around group, to me, at least, was: People suck. They should die.
Yeah, I thought that was weird too. I don’t recall Lysandre explicitly talking about wiping out the filth, but the rest of it still should have raised some red flags.
On a personal note, while the game as a whole was a bit of a disappointment (it wasn’t bad, they just oversold it), I took no small amount of pleasure in taking out Flare and silencing their bullshit Occupy Wall Street-esque rhetoric. I just wish the other hero characters didn’t kind of agree with them towards the end.
“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”
This is less John Galt and more Gilgamesh from the Nasuverse.
My new favorite thing is how whatever panel Lysandre is in half is the background or other characters and the rest is his hair.
I’m in love with that hair
I know it’s the typical classy way to hold a wineglass, but there’s just something about how Lysandre does it that makes it seem so much more… attractive, perhaps? Not sure how to put it.
To be fair we are genre savvy enough to look at the is guy and go “yep, he is obviously the big bad”. But in-universe it could mean any number of more benign things than what you expect from him just because he is the evil mastermind. He could have just as well aimed to set up stricter laws, abolish welfare, re-instate feudalism, invent a machine that brain-washes lazy people into being steadfast or take all Pokémon into central ownership to enhance national production instead of wasting resources on making child soldiers. That later could have been very popular in Kalos with the right rhetoric because they are probably the most war-weary region.
People voted for Trump, so yeah.
What? The guy who has fire-shaped hair, has a cafe decorated in all red, has a, to quote Lysandre, “passion like a burning flame” is the leader of Team Flare? Pffft! Nah!
Also, i meant to say sycamore, not lysandre.
I’m half convinced Sycamore just really wanted to bone him.