Author Topic: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion  (Read 9844 times)

Grey

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #30 on: 20 January 2015, 04:45:52 »
I understand where people are coming from when they say "Victor did x because the plot required him to" - and it's obviously stupid to blame that on the character. I'm not even blaming Stackpole or whoever else wrote a novel featuring Victor, because as far as I understand it they got told "Make this happen, and if it doesn't make sense figure it out". So I do blame FASA/FanPro/whoever else. If you need to make the main character an idiot to tell your story, tell a different story.

This is a legitimate argument, the only counter, and somewhat weak, for which is that the medium is one of pulp sci-fi, not heavy lifting reading or plot intensive reading. The goal was never to tell a good story (sadly), it was about telling a story interesting enough to hook people into the setting. Case in point would be the number of novels that describe BattleMechs as a concept and device in the first few chapters.

I have to say that Battlecorps is doing a very good job of presenting the individual stories in a strong manner with much tighter plots, however because they're taking place in previously exposited events they can afford to be much narrower in focus.

drakensis

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #31 on: 25 February 2015, 15:54:27 »
I'm just reading the Scorpion Jar so I can add that Victor died as he lived: driving the plot of the universe forward and fighting to the last.

"Davions take a lot of killing," he said once. It fits that despite being 'nine years older than God' as someone puts it, he went out fighting the good fight.
"It's national writing month, not national writing week and a half you jerk" - Consequences, 9th November 2018

solmanian

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #32 on: 27 February 2015, 09:46:50 »
I wonder, could the role of Devlin Stone be played by VSD? Or did he simply have way too much baggage? I'd actually find him a more likely candidate to form the republic. Stone comes out of nowhere, and uses some Jedi mind trick to make all the houses and clans go alone with it, but Victor? He was already universally respected, closest thing to a modern Alex Kerensky. Two house lords were his siblings which he placed on throne, he had a strong connection to the Kurita (though I doubt a Davion would ever get too popular in that region...), and he was dating/married to a Marik (a "real" one, at that); and the clans probably respected him as the leader of the refusal war. And as people here have already stated, he would an ideal first lord. I think it would be fitting for the end of the jihad and the time jump, if his story arc ended as "and Victor took his rightfull place as king of the universe, and for the first time in centuries the land was at (relative) peace". That would also might've killed the franchise I guess... Because It would be Battletech ultimate "happy ending" like "Return of the Jedi", people might not have wanted to spoil that. I also see him as the more likely candidate to get himself frozen, to come back when the IS needed him most. I wonder if he would've disbanded the comguards as well?
Making the dark age a little brighter, one explosion at a time.
Have you met the clans? Words like "Naïve" and "misguided" are not enough to describe the notion that a conquest of the IS by the clans would result in a Utopian pacifistic society.

Kotetsu

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #33 on: 27 February 2015, 11:21:46 »
The problem seems to be two-fold. First, making VSD the leader might have rankled some.

Second, it seems as if the Jihad was meant to wash away all the old heroes. Which means they all had to fail and/or die heroicly.

False Son

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #34 on: 27 February 2015, 11:58:19 »
I wonder, could the role of Devlin Stone be played by VSD? Or did he simply have way too much baggage? I'd actually find him a more likely candidate to form the republic.

Victor tried and failed.  After the Ark Royal bombing his coalition floundered.  And, the thing to remember is that the Republic's foundation came after a decade of the Inner Sphere not being able to come up with an effective counter to the Word of Blake.  Non governmental responses, like Uncle Chandy's group were more effective in organizing early efforts against the Blakists.  Dissatisfaction with the inadequate performance of the governments set the stage for a new power, not associated with the previous, ineffective governments to take shape.  There is no figure more embodying the sloppy status quo than Victor Ian Steiner-Davion.

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Stone comes out of nowhere, and uses some Jedi mind trick to make all the houses and clans go alone with it, but Victor? He was already universally respected, closest thing to a modern Alex Kerensky.

Stone courted Victor in Well Met in the Future specifically because Victor has the respect and history of cooperation with the powers that would have to agree to all of Stone's demands.  But, Victor himself was from the nobility.  He wasn't the guy coming up with a whole new system.  Victor's history was to retreat to the corners he felt safest.  Those corners happened to be the military, not the political stage.  Stone was the military man of the Republic, but Lear was behind him to organize things.  Victor had no Lear.  Also, after having botched leadership of the FedCom and Comstar Victor's prospects as an actual leader are pretty low.

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Two house lords were his siblings which he placed on throne, he had a strong connection to the Kurita (though I doubt a Davion would ever get too popular in that region...), and he was dating/married to a Marik (a "real" one, at that); and the clans probably respected him as the leader of the refusal war.

He used those connections to build support for the Republic.  He could do that without having to actually leading it.  Paladinship is exactly the kind of position Victor would be suited for.  Powerful enough to influence the Republic without being powerful enough to mess the whole thing up.

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And as people here have already stated, he would an ideal first lord.

Nope.

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I think it would be fitting for the end of the jihad and the time jump, if his story arc ended as "and Victor took his rightfull place as king of the universe, and for the first time in centuries the land was at (relative) peace". That would also might've killed the franchise I guess... Because It would be Battletech ultimate "happy ending" like "Return of the Jedi", people might not have wanted to spoil that.

That would have contradicted his long history of failure, whimping out of political fights, giving up on his responsibilities, shifting blame, etc.  This isn't Sun-Tzu, where he messes everything up in the beginning and eventually finds his footing and becomes a good leader.  Victor's failures tally higher the longer he is alive.  He defeated REVIVAL.  No one can take that away from him.  Otherwise, he never amounted to much.  The two things he got right after the Great Refusal was to not send Federated Suns nationals to Tharkad, and to join up with Stone.

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I also see him as the more likely candidate to get himself frozen, to come back when the IS needed him most.

He's not that guy.  Stone is that guy.  Victor would have too much self doubt.  He often struggled with being born that guy that destiny had chosen. He always wanted everyone to be his friend.  A self made messiah figure doesn't need friends.   Instead, he'd continue to build his private spy network and listen to everyone's phone conversations.  That's the kind of guy Victor really was, a weasel with good aim.
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Grey

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Re: (Provisional) Character of the Week: Victor Steiner-Davion
« Reply #35 on: 27 February 2015, 12:40:35 »
False Son has basically gotten to the core of it, ultimately Victor has too much negative history and baggage to build something like the Republic on his own, let alone the lack of inspiration. Sadly Victor was never terribly imaginative. While he could think outside the box militarily it was the only box he could climb out of, and that only occasionally.

And Kotetsu is right as well, the Jihad was a way of wiping the slate clean and introducing new leaders and new ideas to the setting. Victor's story ended with the Civil War, what followed was a new era for the universe. Of course the last time something this big was done Hanse had to die to pass the torch so Victor got lucky.

 

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