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Who's the bigger bastard?

WallflowerCanyon

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Cyrus, Ghetsis, or Lysandre?

- You got one guy who's utterly emotionless(or at least tries to be when he's not going all rage-quit on the player and threatening revenge), and tries to make a new "perfect" world without emotions and spirit, with him as its deity. This is all due to his harsh upbringing as a child. In all 3 games, he hints that he will never give up and vows to make it happen even after you defeat him. It's usually the villains without emotions that are the most dangerous, the ones you don't want to mess with.

- The other one takes a child under his wing, and raises that child to become the Team leader, by emotionally manipulating and abusing him into thinking that all people are abusive to Pokémon and they should be liberated. BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. It's all a ploy to get everybody in Unova to release their Pokémon, leaving them defenseless against the one and only organization with the power of Legendary Pokémon to rule over them with an iron fist. When that plan fails, 2 years later he decides to fuse 2 Legendaries into one Dragon and use it as a more direct approach to conquering Unova, by freezing it solid. They actually succeeded in their first test run by freeze-bombing Opelucid City, and that was WITHOUT Kyurem's more powerful form.

- The most recent one(not counting R/S remakes) truly believes that he's carrying out his plan for the good of everybody, to eliminate all the strife and fighting in the world... almost like the first guy mentioned above, but this time with what seems like genuine concern for most people around him. But what exactly would that plan be, you ask? Completely wiping everybody off the face of the Poke-Earth, humans and Pokémon included. The only survivors would belong to his organization. That's right folks, outright genocide. In a Pokémon game.

These three have so far gotten the most character development and darker storylines out of all the main series games. Game-verse only, who do you think is the most interesting/disturbing/whatever/ect.? I would have to choose Lysandre. It almost pisses me off that we didn't get any more in-depth backstory behind why he would choose to commit such an atrocity. Because right now as it stands, it's borderline out of cold blood, unless there's something in X/Y that I missed?
 
Cyrus! YOU DASTARD!!! (I doubt anyone is going to get that reference... Ah well)

Cyrus' plans... dang. Ridding the world of emotion is a pretty messed up affair. If you really think about, Cyrus IS ending the world; I'd imagine without spirit, you'd effectively lose your memory and personality, which in a sense is practically death. At least Lysandre had horrible, but still OK reasoning behind his plan and allowed some to live, even if they are the less-than-stellar people.

Ghetsis was perhaps the least-developed, but probably the most effective and most entertaining. Seeing his descent into madness is also both terrifying and satisfying; Cyrus and Lysandre both just go poof. Also, I have personal Gen V bias, but I'll cast it off;

Out of the 3, Cyrus is probably the biggest bastard in terms of what he wanted to do.

Ghetsis, personality wise, was the biggest bastard, however.
 
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I think Ghetsis is, just for all the emotional manipulation and abuse. Even if the other two are trying to do something truely reprehensible, Ghetsis is the only one of the three who is straight up malicious, and as a result the only one I'd consider to be a bastard at all.
 
Easily Ghetsis. Lysandre and Cyrus have a few sympathetic qualities, but Ghetsis is pretty much irredeemable and pushes the envelope for "evil in a kid's game" more than the former two (and also why he's my favorite Pokémon villain).
 
Ghetsis, of course. Maybe Cyrus had goals on a much grander scale and Lysandre more or less wanted to kill everyone, Ghetsis is the only one who has no redeemable qualities or sympathetic backstory. He did everything just so he could rule Unova, no other reason. Also came this close to on-screen murder. Pretty bastardly to me.
 
I say Lysandre because he wanted to kill everyone on the freaking planet using an ancient death machine and he almost does it too! Ghetsis was just a bad father that in my mind in the first game and in the second he just went around freezing places with a big airship. Now I only beat pearl and its been a good couple years since I played he just wanted to rule the world. To me that is low tier villiany team rocket wanted that not very original in my mind.
 
The worst kind of villains are the ones who think they're doing the right thing. They're the most dangerous because they think they're doing the world a favor. So my vote is for Lysandre.

But Ghetsis is an ass. Who raises a kid just to emotionally destroy them like that? And I think Ghetsis is behind the death of N's parents. They're obviously related since they have the same color hair, and we never find anything out about N's sisters...
 
Ghetsis, definitely. The guy has no remorse or redeeming qualities whatsoever. In fact, he's a sadist. He tells us point-blank that he revels in seeing people loose all hope. What he did in order to cultivate N into his personal crusader, by intentionally abusing and overworking stolen Pokémon so that he could use them in order to warp N's view of how people treat Pokémon, was disgusting. He even comes within an inch of killing the player character (yeah, I know, it said "freeze," but I think we know that they were getting at - never mind that it is possible to freeze to death, so even if he wasn't just using a euphemism...). Who can't be older than 16, for crying out loud. Frankly, I would be surprised if we learned that he had killed before.

I always told my sister; it's quite telling that the well-intentioned Archie, Maxie, and Cyrus all had a Crobat, which evolves via high happiness, on their teams, and Lysandre could use Mega Evolution (which is dependent on bonds), whereas Ghetsis had a Hydreigon with a full-power Frustration.

Lysandre at least had a concept of amicability and camaraderie, and despite becoming an unforgivable genocidal elitist by the end of it, how he ended up like that is pitiable. He honestly tried to help make the world better, but he just couldn't make enough of an impact. He let that get to him and fell into despair. So I don't think he's quite as bad as Ghetsis (even though he would have kept people alive, it would only be so that they could have lived in misery under his rule, and I am sure that lots of people would have died in the process of flash-freezing the entire region nonetheless), but not by much. Because, still. Dude was going to commit genocide.

Cyrus was pretty much insane (You hate feelings, so your solution is to blow up the universe? Ignoring how ridiculously over-the-top that is on its own, you would *have* to be a nut in order to think it a viable option, and it's clear that Cyrus had a pretty intense god complex as well.), but also had a pitiable reason for seeing things the way that he did. He was left emotionally stunted by his parents' neglect and overexpectation of him. It doesn't excuse what he did, but it at least makes it a bit understandable (although I am using that term very loosely here). However, I do have to take off some additional points because of what it was implied that he had done to the Lake Guardians in order to obtain their crystals. The scientists who were involved in it seemed almost traumatized.

So, in order, from "completely and utterly reprehensible as a person" to "a definite bad dude, but he's got his side of the story," I would say that it goes Ghetsis > Cyrus > Lysandre. Cyrus edges out Lysandre mostly because, even though he had a point about emotions being the source of strife (but then again... duh?), his plan made no sense, and we know that there is extraterrestrial life in the Pokémon universe, so he would have killed far more than Lysandre, had he succeeded. Lysandre was at least going to let a small group of people survive.
 
I've often wondered how it would have been possible for Cyrus to create a world "without spirit", and yet still have people and 'mons living(or did he originally intend that? I can't remember the entire context in the games). Because by definition, "spirit" means "life-force". So, would he have basically turned the entire Poke-verse into something of a Mega-Zombie Apocalypse?
 
Who is the biggest bastard?

The scenario-writer(s) of Game Freak.
 
None of them is better or worse than another, no "cause" permits their behavior or goals. None of their ideal worlds is worth living in either.

However if give more room to my personal feelings about their actions, I'd find Ghetsis the worst and most disturbing due to having strong aversion for manipulative people. Lysandre is worse than Cyrus in my opinion too, destroying everyone and everything, including Pokemon etc, is also too much to create a beautiful world - although I'm curious how he would define such "beauty".
I'm not creeped out about villains without emotions, but the ideal world Cyrus tries to achieve is sick too. All living things in the world we know are driven by emotion more or less, even survival instinct, opinions, values and goals are emotion-based stuff - how would anything go forward in a world like that? On the other hand, emotional pain wouldn't exist either - but again, no life-lessons to get over our pain either, or learning from facing our fears...

I must say however, all of these three characters have been very interesting ones, even as they're all bastards.
 
I've often wondered how it would have been possible for Cyrus to create a world "without spirit", and yet still have people and 'mons living(or did he originally intend that? I can't remember the entire context in the games). Because by definition, "spirit" means "life-force". So, would he have basically turned the entire Poke-verse into something of a Mega-Zombie Apocalypse?

As I understand it, by the time that we learn the "true" aim of his plan, he's wanting the new universe to be reserved solely for himself because he believes that only he can resist succumbing to emotions:

Cyrus: "...So you've come. You heard my speech, I take it. Snicker... A big lie, of course. It's true, insofar as my intention is to create a new world. But that world isn't for the likes of Team Galactic. I seek an entirely new world solely for myself. If not, it could never be the complete and perfect world. You've seen my minions of Team Galactic. You yourself must know that they are uniformly useless and incomplete."

Everything he said before that would have been a lie to get the grunts motivated.
 
I always told my sister; it's quite telling that the well-intentioned Archie, Maxie, and Cyrus all had a Crobat, which evolves via high happiness, on their teams, and Lysandre could use Mega Evolution (which is dependent on bonds), whereas Ghetsis had a Hydreigon with a full-power Frustration.

Not sure if this was more than coincidence, but i'd like to think so. Makes for a pretty convincing argument, but how does Cyrus the 'emotionless' one raise happiness?
 
Not sure if this was more than coincidence, but i'd like to think so. Makes for a pretty convincing argument, but how does Cyrus the 'emotionless' one raise happiness?

Well, I mean, no one ever said that the Trainer had to be happy. ;P Or, maybe it was just a very nihilistic Golbat that believed in his cause. Actually, there may be a minor observation to be made there; for comparison, look at his admins. They all seemed to enjoy their roles in the team even though they didn't necessarily abide by Cyrus' anti-spirit manifesto (Mars even developed a crush on Cyrus regardless of his stoicism). It is possible that this could have been one-sided, just as the admins' relationships with Cyrus were. Cyrus himself was incapable of making valuable connections with other people and Pokémon; he preferred to spend his time working with machines, but he presented a compelling cult of personality that drew people in.
 
Cyrus, who in my opinion is also the most selfish. He wanted to destroy the universe and create a new one without emotions just because he thought emotions led to all of the problems in the world. I regard this as being the most evil because no one can be happy in a world without emotions therefore not even Cyrus himself would have enjoyed it because there'd be no happiness. Ultimately nothing good could have come from this.

Lysandre is similar, but imo is just a bit better because he wanted a world where there would be no conflict, which would truly be a better place, and didn't desire to eliminate peoples' spirit and emotions. However, his methods in trying to achieve his goal are just as bad as Cyrus's.

Ghetsis just wanted to rule Unova. He honestly doesn't even compare to the other two imo.
 
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Ghetsis by a mile. No question.

Lysandre and Cyrus are screwed up: they are thinking along the lines of saving the village by burning it. But their goals--even as screwed up as they were--were meant for the ultimate good. They were honestly thinking that if they pulled their plans off, the world would be a better place. Ghetsis on the other hand...

He abused N. His main goal for Pokemon liberation was to have all the weapons for himself and use them against everyone. All he wanted to do was rule the world with an iron fist. That was it. All he wanted was power and he was willing to do anything to get it. So yeah, Ghetsis is the biggest SOB in the Pokemon universe by a long shot. That's why I hate him with every fiber of my being.
 
Ghetsis by a mile. No question.

Lysandre and Cyrus are screwed up: they are thinking along the lines of saving the village by burning it. But their goals--even as screwed up as they were--were meant for the ultimate good. They were honestly thinking that if they pulled their plans off, the world would be a better place. Ghetsis on the other hand...

He abused N. His main goal for Pokemon liberation was to have all the weapons for himself and use them against everyone. All he wanted to do was rule the world with an iron fist. That was it. All he wanted was power and he was willing to do anything to get it. So yeah, Ghetsis is the biggest SOB in the Pokemon universe by a long shot. That's why I hate him with every fiber of my being.

He's definitely one of those bad guys that you "love to hate", that's for sure. I lol'd when he had his meltdown after you defeat him in B2/W2. Like, "that's what you get you ******".
 
I always told my sister; it's quite telling that the well-intentioned Archie, Maxie, and Cyrus all had a Crobat, which evolves via high happiness, on their teams, and Lysandre could use Mega Evolution (which is dependent on bonds), whereas Ghetsis had a Hydreigon with a full-power Frustration.

Not sure if this was more than coincidence, but i'd like to think so. Makes for a pretty convincing argument, but how does Cyrus the 'emotionless' one raise happiness?

Well, Cyrus never stated he had no emotions, nor did he state he didn't succumb to them (I may be wrong. Haven't visited Sinnoh in years.) Also, he obviously hated PEOPLE. He never said anything about Pokémon. I'd like to think he raised his Zubat with love and care.

In fact, Giovanni, Archie and Maxie all repent after their defeats (this is way more obvious with A/M, though), while Lysandre had good (but seriously misguided intentions). Cyrus was human, susceptible to emotion like the rest of us. I would say all of them are good people who just... lost their way. That would explain the Crobat, the Mega. And in Giovanni's case, he has a Marowak in B2/W2. It's theorized this is the Lavender Town Cubone, raised by Giovanni to make up for the loss of his mother at Giovanni's employees' hands.

Only Ghetsis has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, aside from raising N into a good person. And even that might not be his doing either.
 
It's hard for me to really hate Cyrus, despite what he did to the lake guardian trio, because he is the most tragic character of all the supervillains. I don't know if you all realise that at the time he was just 24.
 
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